Happy Valentine's Day From the Folks at Spitzer Space Telescope
Wanna surprise your sweetie with a cosmic valentine? You can’t go wrong with this lovely image of the Ring Nebula (Messier 57), as seen by the Spitzer Space Telescope. It makes a lovely picture to show off, right after you present your loved one with whatever special surprise you have planned for the holiday.
Spitzer Space Telescope is an infrared facility, meaning that it sees wavelengths of light just beyond those we can see with our eyes. The objects that give off infrared light are often dusty and warm, which explains the way the Ring Nebula looks. It’s a planetary nebula, a shell of material ejected from a dying star. The ring is actually a thick cylinder of gas and dust blown off by the dying star early in its death agonies. Radiation from the star heats up the shell of gas, causing it to glow—and that’s what makes the Ring Nebula look so beautiful and ghostly in the infrared.
If you want to look at this ring in greater detail, check here for links to larger, higher-resolution images. It’s an amazing site to behold, and definitely something different to share with your sweetie.
Hubble Space Telescope is one of those icons of modern civilization that sparks curiosity in all of us about exploring the cosmos. I have always found it pretty interesting that, in a time when many of us who are “into” space cut our teeth watching Star Trek and Star Wars, our imaginations are fired by a telescope that does deep-space exploration for us.
It has been a privilege to watch this telescope do its work, even as public perception of it has changed from “Oh, it’s the great HST!” to “It’s a techno-turkey” (after the discovery of spherical aberration) to “It’s doing science” to “Save the HST!” I did my master’s thesis in science journalism on the media treatment of the Hubble Space Telescope, and so I traced its up and down public perception over the course of five years. It’s amazing to think back to the bad old days, when I was about to start graduate school and had just joined an HST instrument team as a graduate research associate. Right after launch we were elated that it was up and seemed to be functioning. Then came the spherical aberration diagnosis and the dark days when all our hallway conversations focused on the burning question, “How could this happen?”
Gradually, as the technicians figured out how to eke good science from the aberrated data, public perception shifted. Each great new image cemented in people’s minds the fact that with ingenuity, we could get good science. Perhaps that’s a valuable lesson to keep in mind in a “I want mine, NOW” culture — that sometimes you have to work harder and longer and be smarter to achieve the really meaningful bling.
Long time readers of this blog know that I never talk politics here. But there comes a time when all of us should think critically about the choices that face us as a nation, especially when it comes to national and international assets like the Hubble Space Telescope. And, these days we find ourselves faced with a number of problems that demand that we actually ask questions of our governments and do a lot of critical thinking about the answers we get. It’s up to us to be THAT responsible, and that’s a fact of life for any citizen in a democracy. We HAVE to ask questions, even of people we might agree with, and act as citizens should when we get the answers. So, forgive me if I get political here: it’s for a good cause.
These days, the fate of the HST hangs in the balance. It CAN be serviced, but the political will to take the risks to do so is not there. We KNOW what the risks are in a shuttle mission, and we can work around them. We can’t say the same for rushing into a war over what now appear to be nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
And so, it’s up to citizens to make it known that we value the space telescope and other aspects of our science and space programs. They’re part of the GOOD stuff about our country, an integral piece of the learning and technology assets we jointly own as citizens. So, we have to do what our citizenship requires: we tell our representatives or our president that we don’t want to lose this asset due to political inaction or fear. We ask the tough questions about the decisions being made in our name. It’s not easy, and it is just as simple to sit back and “let somebody else do it.” But it’s not that simple.
HST's view of the Ring Nebula: An HST Gift From Across Space and Time
HST represents the hard work of friends and neighbors, famous folks and not-so-famous folks. When I wrote my first book about HST with Jack Brandt, we spent a lot of time talking with the scientists who helped make it possible. They aren’t eggheads or enemies of the state or people to be wary of—they’re people anyone would be proud to know, to call as friend or neighbor. And collectively, they’ve brought us incredible insights into the universe. I think we owe it to them and their hard work to defend HST against the shortsightedness of budgeteers who can’t see past the next election cycle.
The telescope’s done an incredible job; it still has a useful lifetime ahead of it. And I, for one, will miss it when it’s gone. It’s been a huge part of my life, and whether or not everyone else realizes it, it’s been a large part of yours as well. Please let your representative and president know that we want HST to stay up and working as long as possible, and that a well-managed servicing mission is not impossible; it’s a risk worth taking.
