Where is hubble

So northern parts of Australia have great access to seeing the HST and can catch the telescope flying right overhead. Unfortunately for people in the south, like myself in Melbourne, the telescope travels much closer to the horizon, and it's even worse for Tasmania but not impossible. Both websites allow you to adjust the latitude and longitude for your specific location, including in-built search facilities that will locate most cities and towns.

The Heavens-Above site provides a great star chart showing the telescope's path across the sky for each event, while N2YO. There are some great passes coming up for Darwin, including Sunday May 3 , when the telescope will travel directly overhead from am to am local time.

A few days later it will be Brisbane's turn, with the best HST pass occurring on May 7 , between am and am. Because Hubble will travel right overhead it will also be at its brightest during these passes. It will appear about as bright as the brightest star in the Southern Cross , known as Acrux which shines at a magnitude of 0. For other capital cities, which are further south, the HST doesn't climb as high in the sky and the best passes coming up will occur on the mornings of May 11 or May 12 click on the capital cities mentioned below to obtain details of each HST pass.

From Perth and Sydney , the telescope will appear about as bright as Gamma Crucis in the Southern Cross around magnitude 1. Adelaide and Canberra will see the HST travel 32 degrees above the northern horizon. While in Melbourne , the telescope drops to an altitude of 20 degrees and for Hobart it almost hugs the horizon, just reaching a height of 10 degrees.

It'll also be fainter, about as bright as Epsilon Crucis , the faint fifth star of the Southern Cross. So dark skies and good views of the northern horizon will be important considerations. By my rough calculations, Hubble's odometer is approaching almost 6 billion km, that's like travelling to the sun and back 20 times. The telescope truly is an engineering marvel, so why not give it a try and see the orbiting space observatory for yourself.

Explore further. More from Astronomy and Astrophysics. Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form. For general feedback, use the public comments section below please adhere to guidelines.

Your feedback is important to us. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages. Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Phys. You can unsubscribe at any time and we'll never share your details to third parties.

More information Privacy policy. This site uses cookies to assist with navigation, analyse your use of our services, collect data for ads personalisation and provide content from third parties. By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. April 30, But despite all its amazing discoveries, you may have several questions about this technological marvel.

The furthest galaxy ever observed by the Hubble telescope is the GN-z11 galaxy, about As the galaxy is so far away and light can only travel so fast ,, meters a second , Hubble is effectively looking back in time when viewing very distant objects. Although Hubble viewed GN-z11 as it was about Weighing 11, kg just less than two African elephants , the Hubble Space Telescope is about The telescope relies on a huge 2.

When first launched, a tiny flaw in this mirror meant Hubble could not focus its lens, with all images captured appearing blurry. Development began almost immediately, and NASA planned to launch the telescope in , but various production delays pushed the launch date back to In the meantime, the Large Space Telescope was renamed the Hubble HST in honor of Edwin Hubble , an American astronomer who, among other things, determined that the universe extended beyond the borders of the Milky Way.

The HST was delayed once more after the space shuttle Challenger exploded a minute after takeoff on January 28 of that year, killing all seven astronauts on board. It took two years before shuttle flights could resume and NASA could begin planning Hubble's launch again.

The world's first space telescope finally launched aboard space shuttle Discovery on April 24, Hubble experienced equipment issues right off the bat. The telescope's images came back so blurry that they were close to useless.

Hubble's main mirror had a defect — a spherical aberration caused by a manufacturing error. It took three years before NASA could mount a repair mission. On Dec. In December , the first new images from Hubble reached Earth, and they were breathtaking. Since then, Hubble has continued to provide unprecedented information about our universe and inspire curious minds around the world.

Hubble transmits about gigabytes of science data every week. That would be roughly 3, feet 1, meters of books on a shelf. The collection of pictures and data is stored on magneto-optical disks. Related: Hubble quiz: How well do you know the famous telescope?

Hubble's elevated perspective and advanced optics allow it to peer farther away than previous ground-based optics are able to see. Because light takes time to travel long distances, the range of the HST makes it function similar to a time machine ; the light it views from remote objects only reveals how that object appeared when the light left it, not how it appears today.

Thus when we look at the Andromeda galaxy, 2. When astronomers pointed the HST to a seemingly empty patch of sky in Ursa Major in , for instance, they captured an image of over 3, galaxies too distant to be detected by other telescopes. This was later called the Hubble Deep Field. Some of the galaxies were so young, they had not yet begun serious star formation.

Other deep field observations in the same area were performed, peering deeper into space each time. In addition to gazing at the early universe, Hubble also helped astronomers gauge how much time had passed since the Big Bang. By measuring a special kind of pulsing star known as a Cepheid variable , they were able to narrow down the age of the universe from its pre-HST range of 10 to 20 billion years to a more precise Hubble also examines individual stars in various stages of their evolution — from the clouds of dust that form infant stars to the corpses of those long since detonated, and those in between.

It has even been able to peer outside of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and into its neighbors, the Magellanic Clouds and Andromeda Galaxy. Related: The most amazing Hubble Space Telescope discoveries. More challenging to see than stars are planets orbiting other suns. Yet in , Hubble captured pictures of the planet Fomalhaut b, the first time an extrasolar planet was directly imaged in visible light.