The Hubble telescope at 30 years - Tony Bell

Our speaker, Tony Bell from Glossop Rotary club told us his talk was dedicated to EPN. The disease was nearly beaten. There were now only cases in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan.  

One of the first astronomers was the Italian, Galileo Galilei. In 1633 he announced that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe. This outraged the Catholic Church and he was prosecuted.

American astronomer, Edwin Hubble, using the Hooker telescope made many discoveries in the first half of the 20th century. This telescope was the world’s largest at that time. However, a telescope works much better when it is in space.

In 1969 the construction of a very large telescope to be launched into space was approved. Tom showed us an illustration of the workings of this telescope which had been named the Hubble. One of the main components of the device were two mirrors. They had to be ground to very great tolerances.  In April 1990 the Space Shuttle Discovery took the Hubble into orbit. It was then discovered that the images the Hubble sent back to earth wee out of focus.

There was consternation at this. The public complained that $4.7 billion had been wasted. It seemed as if the project would have to be abandoned. However it was decided to design new optical components with exactly the same error but in the opposite sense. This was taken into orbit using the Space Shuttle again. After some difficult work by the astronauts the telescope worked flawlessly.

Tony then showed us some amazing photos of the planets, galaxies and nebula  

Over the years there have been several service visits to repair and update the Hubble. The last of these was in 2009. After that the telescope will fall into disuse and will eventually fall out of orbit. There are plans for an even more advanced telescope which will be able to look back into the beginning of time.

This was a fascinating talk enjoyed by all those present.