Telescopes in Space
Space Views from Orbit
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Beyond the Atmosphere and bad weather is where these telescopes fly. This section gives you links to a variety of places for learning about orbiting telescopes. When you are ready, click back to return to the Student Center or click below to explore again. Return to Space Exploration Facts.
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Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has given astronomers a look at distant parts of the universe without the interference of Earth's atmosphere. Some objects pictured by HST are calculated to be 15 billion light years away. It has taken light that long to reach Earth.
Astronauts launched on Shuttle missions have repaired and maintained the orbiting craft to keep it functioning properly. It was discovered that the manufacturing process left the primary mirror slightly out of focus but scientists were able to fix the problem. Images of areas of the sky that were thought to be empty have revealed hundreds of galaxies beyond our own.
Sample HST images.
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HST website
HST public pictures site
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Chandra X-Ray Observatory
Earth receives more than light waves from the universe. Very high frequency waves called X-Rays are produced by high energy objects like pulsars and supernova stars as well as planets like Jupiter. NASA's premier X-ray observatory was named the Chandra X-ray Observatory in honor of the late Indian-American Nobel laureate, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Chandra flies 200 times higher than Hubble and can observe X-rays from clouds of gas five million lightyears across. If you could read a stop sign at a distance of twelve miles you could "see" as good as the telescope. The Chandra telescope is operated for NASA by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center also has a Chandra webpage for further information about the mission.
Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off on mission STS-93 to deploy the 50,162 pound observatory on July 22, 1999. At 45 feet long, Chandra is the largest satellite the shuttle has ever launched. With the launch of STS-93, Col. Eileen Collins became the first woman to command a space shuttle mission. Collins became an astronaut in July, 1991. Her first space flight was in February, 1995, as pilot of STS-63. To find out more about her go to the STS-93 Crew page.
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Columbia STS-93 Mission
Col. Collins STS-93 Crew
NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center/Chandra
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Below are some of the images from the project. Because the human eye can't see X-rays the researchers color the wavelength information from the telescope. This is so that they can understand what they are observing better. Captions are from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
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Crab Nebula
"The explosion was seen on Earth in 1054 AD. At the center of the nebula is a rapidly spinning neutron star, or pulsar that emits pulses of radiation 30 times a second. The image shows the central pulsar surrounded by tilted rings of high-energy particles that appear to have been flung outward over a distance of more than a light year from the pulsar. Perpendicular to the rings, jet-like structures produced by high-energy particles blast away from the pulsar. The diameter of the inner ring in the image is about one light year, more than 1000 times the diameter of our solar system. The X rays from the Crab nebula are produced by high-energy particles spiraling around magnetic field lines in the Nebula. The bell-shaped appearance of the Nebula could be due to the interaction of this huge magnetized bubble with clouds of gas and dust in the vicinity." Click image or here for larger view.
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Eta Carinae
"The Chandra X-ray image shows the complex nature of the region around Eta Carinae, a massive supergiant star that is 7,500 light years from Earth. The outer horseshoe shaped ring has a temperature of about 3 million degrees Celsius. It is about two light years in diameter and was probably caused by an outburst that occurred more than a thousand years ago. The blue cloud in the inner core is three light months in diameter and is much hotter; the white area inside the blue cloud is the hottest and may contain the superstar which is vigorously blowing matter off its surface." Click image or here for larger view.
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Andromeda Galaxy
"This X-ray image shows the central portion of the Andromeda Galaxy. The blue dot in the center of the image is a cool million degree X-ray source where a supermassive black hole with the mass of 30 million suns is located. The X-rays are produced by matter funneling toward the black hole. Numerous other hotter X-ray sources are also apparent. Most of these are probably due to X-ray binary systems, in which a neutron star or black hole is in a close orbit around a normal star." Click image or here for larger view.
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Vela Pulsar
"Chandra's bizarre image of the Vela pulsar (bright spot in the center) shows the details of a compact nebula that resembles a gigantic cosmic crossbow. This structure is created by a rapidly rotating neutron star, or pulsar that spins out rings and jets of high energy particles while shooting through space. The swept back appearance of the nebula is due to the motion of the pulsar through the supernova remnant. The green arrow shows the direction the pulsar is moving." Click image or here for larger view.
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Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) was launched in December 1995 by an Atlas Centaur rocket and became operational in March 1996. SOHO weighs about two tons and with its solar panels extended stands about 25 feet across. The spacecraft has 12 scientific instruments collecting information about sunspots, the corona, solar flares and prominences, and vibrations deep in the Sun's interior. Photos courtesy of SOHO consortium, SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.
Huge Sunspot Group
"Active region 9393 as seen by MDI hosted the largest sunspot group observed so far during the current solar cycle. On 30 March 2001, the sunspot area within the group spanned an area more than 13 times the entire surface of the Earth! It was the source of numerous flares and coronal mass ejections, including the largest flare recorded in 25 years on 2 April 2001. Caused by intense magnetic fields emerging from the interior, a sunspot appears to be dark only when contrasted against the rest of the solar surface, because it is slightly cooler than the unmarked regions."
Fireworks
"In a sequence from four instruments this blast of material from the sun called a Coronal Mass Ejection(CME), part of a series of 5 CMEs in late November 2000, shows its progress from a sunspot group (MDI), to the flash of a flare (EIT 195Å), to a blasting CME seen 14 hours later (LASCO C2), and to a large expanding CME cloud over three hours later."
The arrow shows the sunspot in the affected region. The different colors are to show the different temperatures and wavelengths each instrument studies. The disk in the lower images is part of the instrument and blocks out the body of the sun.
Space Weather
"This composite image presents the three most visible elements of space weather: a storm from the Sun, aurora as seen from space, and aurora as seen from the Earth. The solar storm is a corona mass ejection (CME) composite from EIT 304Å superimposed on a LASCO C2 image, both from SOHO. The middle image from Polar’s VIS imager shows charged particles as they spread down across the U.S. during a large solar storm event on July 14, 2000. Lastly, Jan Curtis took this image of an aurora display in Alaska, the visible evidence of space weather that we see here on Earth."
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
SOHO Hot Shots
ESA SOHO Page
Song of the Sun
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