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ARTWORK: Jasmin Small
The Humble Hubble Telescope: Our Eyes in the Sky Lily Alexander Images courtesy of NASA’s Webb Space Telescope
Have you ever wondered how humanity came to be? After all, it’s in our nature to be curious and the universe is another mystery we long to uncover. Our interest in space can be dated back thousands of years before the Common Era, where eastern cultures observed and recorded the movements of the sun, the moon and the stars. Through these observations, sundials, star charts and calendars were created to track hours, days, months and years. In particular, it was useful for agricultural purposes in identifying harvest seasons and for sailors to navigate across the seas. As technology advanced, humanity explored the moon, launched satellites and sent rovers off to other planets in our galaxy. Humanity has speculated on the origins of the universe since the beginning and has found comfort in religion and supernatural beliefs. Our curiosity has caused us to ask the big questions - Where did we come from? Are there other intelligent lifeforms in the universe? Is there really a God? Through the Hubble Telescope, we are starting to formulate answers to some of these questions. The Hubble Telescope, named after astronomer Edwin Hubble, is the size of a
large school bus and orbits at an altitude of 569km above Earth’s atmosphere, completing a full circuit every 97 minutes. The Hubble Space Telescope provides information on the electromagnetic spectrum of space and captures high-resolution images, allowing us to observe distant stars, galaxies and planets. It was built by the United States of America, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with the purpose of extending our knowledge of the universe. The benefit of having a telescope in space is that it avoids all the interference from our environment, light pollution, rain clouds and turbulence. The Hubble’s position high above the atmosphere means it can capture unobstructed images that are clearer and help us see deeper into our universe than our ground-based telescopes have previously been able to achieve. The Hubble is a Cassegrain reflector telescope. Light enters the device through the opening at one end of the telescope’s tube shape. The light hits the primary mirror before reflecting to a secondary mirror, which then reflects the light to a focal point at the centre of the primary mirror. The mirrors used are similar to the ones you would find at home, although
