Earth's orbiting observatories and their literally awesome images

Former Homepage Editor

UpdatedSat, July 25, 2015 at 3:00 PM UTC

While the Voyager 1 probe, launched in 1977, cruises into interstellar space (the farthest man-made object from Earth) and missions like New Horizons capture snaps from the outskirts of the solar system, we've been keeping the heavy hitters close to home. Massive space telescopes that scan the cosmos with augmented eyes have been orbiting the Earth for years to get a clear view of the universe without atmospheric distortion. The Hubble Space Telescope's 1990 launch set a new precedent for these space-based observatories in terms of scale and abilities. These new instruments have helped scientists gather an incredible amount of data and mind-bending photos from deep space. With Pluto hogging the spotlight lately, we decided to take a look back at some of these powerful orbiting eyes and their visual achievements.

[Image credit: JPL]

The Hubble Space Telescope hitched a ride aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1990, making it the first major optical telescope to be placed into orbit. It’s 43.5 feet long, weighs 27,000 pounds and circles the Earth at about 17,000MPH, with its eye pointed out into space. Its location 340 miles above the surface spares it from the atmospheric distortion and light pollution that Earth-based observatories suffer.

Hubble, a collaborative effort between NASA and the ESA, has been integral in expanding our knowledge about phenomena such as dark energy, dark matter and black holes. The data gathered over the years has informed more than 12,800 scientific papers. It’s also presented us with an incredible tapestry of images, mostly in the visible light spectrum, from our own solar system to deep space. With the shuttle program offline, the Hubble won’t be returning to Earth, but its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is scheduled to launch in 2018.

NGC 6503, also known as the "Lost-In-Space galaxy" is located in a surprisingly sparse area of space called the Local Void. It's one of the few objects visible in an area nearly 150 million light-years wide devoid of stars and other galaxies.

[Image: NASA, ESA, D. Calzetti (University of Massachusetts), H. Ford (Johns Hopkins University), and the Hubble Heritage Team]

The Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched in July 1999 aboard the space shuttle Columbia mission STS-93. It was the most powerful X-ray telescope in the world and was sent into an orbit 200 times higher than the Hubble Space Telescope. The satellite is big, too, weighing over 10,000 pounds and measuring 45.3 feet long and 64 feet wide with its solar arrays extended. Its X-ray spectrum made it privy to black holes that were previously invisible and made it ideal for studying gas clouds and quasars.

The Chandra and XMM-Newton, both X-ray telescopes, joined forces to create this shot of Puppis A -- the remnants of a supernova that could have been viewed from Earth 3,700 years ago. The colors represent different levels of X-ray energy, with red, green and blue as indicators from low to high.

[Image: Chandra and XMM-Newton - NASA/CXC/IAFE/G.Dubner et al & ESA/XMM-Newton]

The Spitzer Space Telescope is a cryogenically cooled observatory that scanned the cosmos using infrared. It was launched in 2003, but ran out of coolant in 2009, at which time it began its “warm mission” leveraging its shortest-wavelength cameras that could still function without controlled low temperatures.

The Helix Nebula is the remnant of a system where a sun-like star died off and ejected its gaseous mass outward. Taken in infrared, the blues and greens are leftovers from the first wave of ejecta, with red as the final layer to be discharged. The tiny white dot at the very center is a white dwarf -- what's left of the original star.

[Image: Spitzer Space Telescope - NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Ariz.]

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) was sent into orbit in 2003 aboard a Pegasus XL rocket. This space telescope used ultraviolet light to observe galaxies and has surveyed hundreds of millions during its nine-year mission. Its exploits include providing independent confirmation of the existence of dark energy and discovering a massive comet-like tail extending off of a star called Mira.

If you were on Earth thousands of years ago, you might have been able to see the supernova that left these remnants with your naked eye. The Cygnus Loop Nebula appears in the ultraviolet spectrum as blue wisps of gas and dust, which continue to expand away from the epicenter of the blast.

[Image: GALEX - NASA/JPL-Caltech]

Although not readily perceivable with the human eye, gamma rays are an extremely high-energy form of light. The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (formerly known as Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope or GLAST) was launched in 2008 to gather information about the high-energy cosmos until its planned mission end in 2018. The project is a collaborative effort including the US Department of Energy and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Sweden.

This is a high-energy view of the entire sky showing the brightest gamma-ray sources as a bright slash across the center of the image. It was taken with the Large Area Telescope (LAT) instrument on board the spacecraft.

[Image: Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope - NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration]

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory was launched in 2009 aboard the Ariane 5 ECA. Its mission was to explore the formation and evolution of galaxies, as well as explore the molecular chemistry of the universe. It had the largest single mirror ever built for a space telescope, measuring over 11 feet in diameter, to collect long-wavelength radiation from distant objects. According to the ESA, Herschel was also "the only space observatory that covered the spectral range from far-infrared to sub-millimeter wavelengths."

Herschel captured this view of the Horsehead Nebula located in the constellation Orion, which was released in 2013. It's actually a composite of various wavelengths represented by each of the various colors. Not to be outdone, the Hubble Space Telescope took its own snap of the nebula with its Wide Field Camera 3 at near-infrared wavelengths.

[Image: Herschel Space Observatory - ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/N. Schneider, Ph. André, V. Könyves (CEA Saclay, France) for the “Gould Belt survey” Key Programme]

The Kepler spacecraft, which launched the same year as the Herschel Space Observatory, was designed with a unique purpose. It was built to survey the galaxy in search of Earth-sized planets orbiting in habitable zones around sun-like stars. It uses the "transit method of detecting extrasolar planets" by watching for dips in brightness as objects cross in front of stars.

In 2011, the Kepler space observatory detected Kepler 16b, the first circumbinary planet (one orbiting two stars). A year later it discovered the Kepler-47 system, one in which two planets (Kepler 47b and 47c) are orbiting a binary system in the habitable zone. Unfortunately, they're both gas giants, but the recent discovery of 452b orbiting a sun-like star may be our best hope for a backup plan, if things on Earth don't pan out.

[Image: Kepler Space Observatory - NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle]

In 2010, NASA launched its Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), the first satellite that's part of the organization's Living With a Star (LWS) program. Its mission is to keep tabs on the sun, monitoring its magnetic field activity, gathering high-resolution images and collecting internal readings. This data will help researchers predict solar storms and other activity that can affect spacecraft, astronauts and even life on Earth.

On June 25th this year, the SDO captured this image of an M7.9-class, mid-level solar flare.

[Image: Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) - NASA/SDO]

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Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope hitched a ride aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1990, making it the first major optical telescope to be placed into orbit. It’s 43.5 feet long, weighs 27,000 pounds and circles the Earth at about 17,000MPH, with its eye pointed out into space. Its location 340 miles above the surface spares it from the atmospheric distortion and light pollution that Earth-based observatories suffer.

Hubble, a collaborative effort between NASA and the ESA, has been integral in expanding our knowledge about phenomena such as dark energy, dark matter and black holes. The data gathered over the years has informed more than 12,800 scientific papers. It’s also presented us with an incredible tapestry of images, mostly in the visible light spectrum, from our own solar system to deep space. With the shuttle program offline, the Hubble won’t be returning to Earth, but its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is scheduled to launch in 2018.

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Earth's orbiting observatories and their literally awesome images

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