HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE(Granddaddy of them all)

(LEFT:A file photo of one of HST's images of the Pillars of Creation in The Eagle Nebula).

HI guys so ready for it?????

Lets start....I think you all know whats a Telescope.Yes...an instrument that uses lenses to focus distant objects with good accuracy.As this is most important of inventions in Astrophysics point of view i am dedicating my first blog towards it. So whats a Space telescope all about.Well as the name suggests its a telescope in space. No joke as NASA has already launched several of them.Its a satellite orbiting around earth that acts as a telescope.So naturally a question arises why on earth a satellite in space!Well a space telescope necessarily eliminates one big problem that every ground-based satellite faces....Atmospheric disturbances that rules out the possibility of having accurate observations being made round the clock.So a Space telescope has the freedom to operate round the clock with great accuracy.

Now we will discuss about the most important space telescope till date.The Hubble Space Telescope or HST. Named after the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, it was launched in 1990 by NASA and the European Space Agency with a view of observing in detail the vast extents of our unexplored universe so as to help scientists understand our universe better.Built at a huge budget of around 2billion USD,the HST has been able to take Astronomy to great heights by capturing some of our universe's greatest phenomenons. It has a very finely grounded mirror that has been able to capture very far away objects, such as distant galaxies and stars to that detail that scientists have been able to study their characteristics almost completely.

The HST captures images as it revolves around the Earth and relays them back to Earth to a ground station which controls every motion of the Hubble using computer based controls.One of the most important images captured by the HST is something called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field,which is the photograph of the most distant galaxies ever to be observed by humans. One of my personal favourites is the photograph of something called Pillars of Creation in the Eagle nebulae,which are mega-sized columns of gas where stars are born every second as the name suggests.

This is just an introduction to HST to learn more go this link in wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope. Also one can visit the official site of the Hubble: http://hubblesite.org or www.spacetelescope.org(you will find amazing videos in this one).