Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
It’s been 32 years since NASA launched Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. And just like every year, the anniversary is marked by a photo that Hubble captured on duty.
To celebrate Hubble’s 32nd birthday, NASA has shared yet another remarkable image. It shows an unusual close-knit collection of five galaxies, called The Hickson Compact Group 40.
Project Dragonfly, designed by a team from Yale University and the University of Toronto in 2013 is an attempt to capture the darkest parts of the sky that are so faint that they’ve managed to escape the gaze of more conventional telescopes – even the really huge ones. The design was built using an array of 3 Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM II lenses to begin with in what they called the Dragonfly Telephoto Array.
It was expanded to 10 lenses and in 2015, Canon supplied 40 more EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM II lenses to the team, bringing their total up to 48 in two 24-lens units. Now, with some more help from Canon, the team is going to put together four more of the Dragonfly Telephoto Array units for a total of 168 400mm f/2.8 lenses pointed towards the sky to capture the darkest galaxies in the universe.
Despite five repair missions it has gone through, the Hubble telescope has made it to the age of 30. NASA already share the stunning photo it took on its birthday back in April, but the celebration isn’t over yet. To mark Hubble’s 30th anniversary, NASA has added 30 more breathtaking photos to the already impressive collection.
On 24 April 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope started its journey, when the space shuttle Discovery and its five-astronaut crew took it from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was deployed into Earth orbit a day later and has been taking magnificent photos of space ever since. The photo Hubble took on its 30th birthday is nothing less impressive than others, and it shows the incredible beauty of starbirth.
Hubble Space Telescope was launched in April 1990, which means that it celebrates its 30th birthday this month. To mark this anniversary, NASA has added a fun feature to its website. By entering your date of birth, you can find out which stunning image Hubble captured on your birthday.
What’s the first photo that comes to your mind when you think of Hubble Space Telescope? For me, it’s the Hubble Deep Field from 1995. Hubble has definitely given us some of the most iconic photos of space, and it continues to do so. As we are wrapping up 2019, it’s time to see some of the best images taken this year.
While telescopes do a great job gathering light and obtaining images of ridiculously distant objects, even the largest and most advanced units are assumed to be unable to detect certain faint structures due scattered light which may be hiding them.
An awkward looking, multi-lens array was built to solve the problem – the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. Using ten of Canon’s finest 400mm lenses, the Dragonfly’s design significantly reduces scattered light and internal reflections within the optics, allowing ultra-low surface brightness astronomy at visible wavelengths.
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