Happy Birthday Hubble! Top Five Spring Telescope Targets
Happy Birthday Hubble! Top Five Spring Telescope Targets
Hubble in orbit Credit: NASA
Originally posted on Dark Sky Diary by Steve Owens @Darkskyman on twitter
The iconic Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched 23 years ago on 24 April 1990, and ever since has been returning breathtaking images of the cosmos as well as world-changing science. It is, without a doubt, one of the most successful scientific instruments ever built.
To celebrate its 23rd birthday here is a list of five stunning celestial objects visible over the next couple of months that you can find for yourself using a small earth-based telescope. Most of these objects will look like nothing more than diffuse grey smudges in the field of view of your eyepiece, but I’ve illustrated this post with some Hubble Space Telescope images of the same objects, to show you what they really look like. Despite the fact that your telescope can’t ever show anything as stunning as an HST image, there’s something even more wonderful about seeing these objects in real-time, for yourself, not mediated via a computer screen. (more…)
