This NASA Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of the extragalactic nebula NGC 1546.NASA , ESA , STScI , David Thilker ( JHU )
The Hubble Space Telescope has been through some troubles of late , and the way that it operate had to be change recently to right for some degraded computer hardware . The telescope ’s three gyros , which aid it to interchange between dissimilar targets in the sky , have been experiencing issues , with one in special frequently run out over late month . NASA made the determination latterly tochange the way that Hubble points , and it now uses just one gyroscope at a fourth dimension rather of all three in rescript to preserve the two remaining gyros for as long as possible .
This alteration mean that Hubble will now be slower to switch between objective , and there are some targets ( like physical object very close to Earth ) that it wo n’t be able to observe any more . But the upside is that Hubble is still working and producing gorgeous images of infinite — including the image above , which is one of the first take since Hubble switched to its unexampled mode .
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of the galaxy NGC 1546.NASA, ESA, STScI, David Thilker (JHU)
As well as demonstrating that Hubble is still alive and well and capable to keep doing science , the image shows the nearby galaxy of NGC 1546 and the dramatic lanes of dust that swirl around the galaxy ’s center . The dust take on a reddish - browned colour due to the igniter filtering through from the bright galax nitty-gritty , which beam in yellow . The blue areas in this epitome are where young , red-hot stars are forming .
“ Hubble ’s fresh image of a spectacular coltsfoot demonstrate the full succeeder of our unexampled , more stable pointing modal value for the scope , ” allege Dr. Jennifer Wiseman , aged project scientist for Hubble at NASA ’s Goddard Space Flight Center , in astatement . “ We ’re poise now for many geezerhood of discovery ahead , and we ’ll be count at everything from our solar organisation to exoplanets to aloof galaxy . Hubble plays a sinewy part in NASA ’s astronomical toolkit . ”
Hubble is now more than 30 year old , as it was launched in 1990 . It has had various challenge and locating over the years , most notably when it was first launch and a tiny defect in its basal mirror do all of its images to hail out blurry . That was furbish up by send a team of astronauts on a space shuttle mission to call the telescope . There were a total of five servicing missions , with the most recent occurring in 2009 , . Since then , all maintenance to Hubble has been performed remotely from the ground .
