Hubble extended

[Shiraz]

good news if they can do it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/06/27/nasas-hubble-space-telescope-will-be-in-space-for-five-more-yea/?utm_hp_ref=innovation

[RickS]

It has certainly outlasted the warranty :)

[xelasnave]

I wish they would bring it back when it ends its run.
Put it in the Smithstonian and hang the cost.
Alex

[alpal]

They should launch a dozen more Hubbles.

[xelasnave]

I think they have another mirror.
They are focused on the James Webb.
But I still use my 6" even after getting my 12" and I would love to have a spare new mirror for that 6"
I would rathercash got there than GW stuff and rather look at nice photos as opposed to some wavey lines representing I dont know what.
And remember the first go used a faulty primary one would think a good primary up there would produce even better results. Test it first if they have not figured that out...
Notes.. The use of the words focused and figured were not intended to be puns.
Alex

[markbakovic]

I suspect this is much more to do with the delays and instrumentation problems pushing JWST back and affecting its mission than a vote of confidence in being able to operate HST effectively for another 5 years. Of course as long as its flying and pointing there's plenty of imaging it can do, and not without research utility, but the reality is that it offers too limited an instrument suite for the cost and rarity of its observing time. Modern ground based AO has made it nowhere near the killer scope it once was.

As for bringing it back: what in? Ditto maintaining it: with the demise of the shuttle there is no service platform available for it, so it may well not even make 2021. My guess would be it'll wind up a very expensive camera for making nice APODs and "keeping space warm" for americans. (My gut says it already is, but I may well be wrong). To my mind that's actually quite sad: pretty pictures on their own do not constitute science, their value is in outreach and education. But those goals can be achieved by other instruments (like, the very nice ones owned by members of this forum, for instance) which don't suck quite so much money from other, higher value-for-money projects. Or they could just divert all of its funding to TESS or a NEID-South :P

[alpal]

Ground based scope can't pick up ultra violet &
I don't believe they can give large pictures all in focus
at
a resolution of better than 0.1 arc seconds.
They can only give that resolution for a pinpoint little picture -
like splitting double stars.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[xelasnave]

Bring it back in the Hubble Space Telescope Recovery Vehicle.
Alex

[sil]

I think things like this be left in place and given to the community to use. What an awesome way for new techniques to be developed.

[xelasnave]

One can only hope it becomes an either or between our ideas and not just let it drop in the ocean.
Alex

[markbakovic]

Fair point on far UV, but a dedicated platform like GALEX (maybe a bit bigger) would probably still be better for that than a broadband observatory like HST.
As for resolution and large pictures Suprime Cam on Subaru has 0.2" per pixel, (ie same as HST WFC/IR), but ten times the FOV, while its update, Hyper Suprime Cam, has a pixel scale of 0.17 arcsec/px over 1.5 degrees (versus 2.7 armin for WFC) [which is why its looking for Planet 9] while "the LUCIs" on LBT are 0.12"/px over 4' in the infrared (HST WFC/UVIS does indeed have a 4 "centiarcsec" [lets make that a word!] pixel scale quoted but the recommendation to users is not to image above 0.4" resolution, although the default setting is still 0.2": the CCD's are now significantly degraded by radiation and this along with a suite of software processing tools are necessary to combat the decrease in charge transfer efficiency due to "the space environment") Also, LBT has a nicely stabilised high resolution spectrograph in the basement that's 6m long and doesn't need a crew of 4 qualified astronauts and a Canadarm to service :P

Of course such wide fields are possible because of 2-storey field flatteners and other things space telescopes don't have, (like 400 fibre heads feeding cryostat-housed instruments the size of minivans), so it's really mostly the "other things" than just a mirror and a camera that favour ground based observatories, though size does matter.

But as you pointed out, not for every job, true. Also I can't say big images are what I had in mind with my post, pretty as they may be. So I could be plenty wrong about how the 8m class ground based observatories compare... :)

[Shiraz]

but Allan's point is that the earth bound scopes cannot give high resolution (AO) imaging and reasonable field of view at the same time - and they certainly cannot do so in the visible/UV. Hubble can do it, simply because there is no atmosphere - even though the sensors are now quite ancient. It still does some things better than anything else (eg the deep fields and lensing studies) and it is quite startling to compare the best that ground based scopes can do with the equivalent from Hubble. For example, conventional ground based scopes show the large gravitational arc in Abell 2667 as a moderately resolved curved object. Hubble showed enough fine detail (0.05arcsec scale and mag28) that a moderately well resolved image of the source galaxy could be reconstructed - amazing. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.6594v1.pdf

It will be great if it can remain productive just a bit longer.

[strongmanmike]

Agree...amazing! :eyepop:

Mike

[alpal]

yes - I was under the impression that the advanced adaptive optics works for only
a tiny area of the image.

[ZeroID]

SOFIA, the plane mounted scope does UV extremely well. Spends 6 months down here in NZ in winter, then 6 months in the northern hemisphere. 10 hours flight times from Christchurch, Antarctica and back via a Tasmania flyover all at 35,000'.

I like Hubble too, the longer it continues to work the better but the reality is it will eventually wear out ( gyros as before eg ) and the cost of maintaining it when other more advanced projects take precedence. Hopefully it can hang around at end of life long enough for some recovery options in the not too distant future, who knows ? Maybe relocate it to the moon and put it on the net or something for amateurs.

[alpal]

I am hoping that the Russians can come up with a way to save Hubble.
The Yanks have lost interest.

[Shiraz]

it is still taking some interesting images.
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasas-hubble-captures-the-beating-heart-of-the-crab-nebula - crikey!.

[alpal]

The Hubble is amazing & it will be a huge loss when it is disbanded.
I just wish they would have made something much larger like the James Webb telescope to replace it
& had it in close orbit so we could maintain it for the next 50 to 100 years.
The James Webb telescope is set up for infra red & it may not even work
& even if it does it's expected lifespan is only 5 years.

When you think about it -
there are so many galaxies that even an army of a dozen Hubble's could not take closeups of all of them.