So, they’re going to fix Hubble and bring it up to modern spec in 2008. That’s great and about time somebody used some common sense about our nation’s (the world’s, actually) valuable astronomy asset. Sure the mission can be dangerous, but the dangers are known. And the return is great. As is the respect for what HST can do.
HST does drop-dead gorgeous images, like the recent view of V838 Monocerotis, above. It delivers multi-wavelength views (very near infrared and ultraviolet) of objects to let us know how they look in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. And, since its launch and first servicing mission, HST has taken us farther out to the most distant reaches of the cosmos. What’s not to like about that?
So, I’m glad they’re going to restore HST and bring it up to date. It’s a respectable and famous observatory, and worth far more to humanity than a lot of other things our tax dollars fund.
I’ve been writing off and on over the past year about the Griffith Observatory project, which has encompassed a complete renovation of the building as well as the addition of new exhibits. My part of the project has been to write the content for all the exhibits. Griffith Observatory opens to the public again this Friday, November 3rd.
We attended the opening Galactic Gala for the observatory last Sunday night, and it was a very memorable event. Mostly I wanted to attend to see the rest of the team I worked with all this time, but also to celebrate the re-opening of a singular institution—there is nothing like Griffith Observatory anywhere in the world. As director Ed Krupp has mentioned many times, it’s the only public observatory in the world that has had more people look through its telescope than any other telescope in the world. That alone is worth celebrating, because it means that a LOT of people have seen a little bit of the cosmos through the Observatory’s Zeiss.
The official ribbon-cutting is Thursday, and that will feature a number of public speakers. For the Galactic Gala, we heard a series of short introductory speeches, followed by the projection of the star Epsilon Cygni (72 light-years away) into the “O” of Observatory on the front of the Art Deco Griffith Observatory. The light we saw that night had left the star 72 years ago, when Griffith first opened its doors.