Fourteen Years of Great Science

A ring of brilliant blue star clusters wraps around the yellowish nucleus of what was once a normal spiral galaxy in this new image from NASAs Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The galaxy, catalogued as AM 0644-741, lies 300 million light-years away in the direction of the southern constellation Dorado. A larger view is available here.
A ring of brilliant blue star clusters wraps around the yellowish nucleus of what was once a normal spiral galaxy in this new image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The galaxy, catalogued as AM 0644-741, lies 300 million light-years away in the direction of the southern constellation Dorado. A larger view is available here.

On April 24th NASA and Hubble enthusiasts everywhere will celebrate the 14th anniversary of the launch of what has become one of the best-known orbiting telescopes of our time. The Space Telescope Science Institute released the picture above to commemorate the occasion. Of course there were times when it didn’t seem like the scope would ever do anything as lovely as this image, but the scientists and technicians have more than overcome the problems and we see these kinds of sights routinely.

For me this anniversary is also another milestone. This week Mark and I are releasing our latest Hubble planetarium show, and although the release wasn’t really timed to take advantage of the anniversary, I guess it’s pretty apropos. I’ve talked in these pages before about how the HST has been part of my life since that fateful day — I’ve written a master’s thesis, three shows (one of them also a video), two books, and bunches of articles on the telescope, its science, and public perceptions of the project. It’s a fascinating topic, combining not just the purity of lovely images and data, but also the very human traits of curiosity, intelligence, and of course, hubris.

If you’ve never browsed through the tremendous archive of images over at Hubblesite.org, go take a visit and see what HST has accomplished over 14 years, encompassing observations of thousands and thousands of objects by teams of thousands and thousands of scientists. Celebrate HST!

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