Friday, April 23rd, 2010

The Hubble at 20

This image of a jet in the Carina Nebula taken with Hubble's WFC3 detector was one of the first images released following the final Hubble servicing mission. NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, and we're having a celebration. In this segment of Science Friday, it's a tribute to the Hubble. We'll talk about its history, including one of science's biggest blunders -- and its contributions to science, from confirming dark energy, to calculating the age of the universe.

Guests

Mario Livio
Senior Astrophysicist and Head of Office of Public Outreach
Space Telescope Science Institute
Author, Is God a Mathematician (Simon & Schuster, 2009)
Baltimore, Maryland

Ron Cowen
Astronomy Writer, Science News
Washington DC

Related Books

Is God a Mathematician?

The Accelerating Universe: Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos

Hubble: A Journey Through Space and Time

Related Links

Segment produced by:Annette Heist

Image: Astronauts working on the Hubble Space Telescope during the STS-125 mission.
NASA image.

Image: This Hubble image taken by the observatory’s new Wide Field Camera 3 in Infrared highlights some of the oldest galaxies ever seen.
NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory and University of California, Santa Cruz) and the HUDF09 Team

Image: Messier 101 in a composite of views from the Spitzer Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Hubble/Chandra/Spitzer teams

Image: This 2006 Hubble Space Telescope optical image shows the belt of dust and debris (bright oval) surrounding the star Fomalhaut and the planet (inset) that orbits the star every 872 years and sculpts the inner edge of the belt.
Paul Kalas/UC Berkeley; STScI

Image: The 'Magic Mountain,' a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, imaged by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in Feb. 2010.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)