For you Orion Nebula fans, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope are teaming up to release their latest look at the nebula. It’s just stunning. You can read more about it at their websites, but for now, I’m sharing it with you for your staring pleasure!
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.