DISCOVER Magazine. Science, Technology and The Future
Current Issue
Subscribe Today »
  • Renew
  • Give a Gift
  • Archives
  • Customer Service
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Newsletter
  • Health & Medicine
  • Mind & Brain
  • Technology
  • Space
  • Human Origins
  • Living World
  • Environment
  • Physics & Math
  • Video
  • Photos
  • Podcast
  • RSS
Bad Astronomy
« Seth Shostak gets the Colbert treatment
Shuttle to land (maybe) at 14:00 GMT Friday »

More incredible Hubble pictures


Whoa.



Hard on the heels of The Big Picture’s homage to Hubble comes this one at Geenstijl. These are gorgeous shots. My only complaint? There are only two pix of STIS; one is fuzzy and the other is blocked by the astronauts! Oh well.

Share

May 21st, 2009 2:30 PM by Phil Plait in NASA, Pretty pictures | 24 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

24 Responses to “More incredible Hubble pictures”

  1. 1.   Mully410 Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 2:32 pm

    Very nice. I loved watching helmet cam during the repairs. Very cool!

  2. 2.   Trebuchet Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 2:57 pm

    Breathtaking pictures. I was wishing for captions but I suppose they’d have been in Dutch!

    We humans really can do some awesome stuff when we put our minds to it.

  3. 3.   Naked Bunny with a Whip Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 3:33 pm

    I can see my house from…oh dang, I already used that joke today.

    That picture makes me dizzy. Good thing I’m not an astronaut, or particularly tall.

  4. 4.   Julian M Bucknall Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 3:37 pm

    Hubble’s been operational for how long? 20 years? And not a spot of rust on that chassis. Amazing!

    (You’re right: abso-flippin-lutely gorgeous.)

  5. 5.   STS-125 Shuttle Mission: Hubble Servicing Mission 4 - Page 19 - Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 3:39 pm

    [...] BA Blog recommends: Geenstijl in Dutch, but the large-format Hubble-servicing images are universal. __________________ 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 … [...]

  6. 6.   SimonD Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 4:21 pm

    Has any thought been given to retrieving the Hubble? Surely it is deserving of preservation it is one of the modern wonders of the world.

  7. 7.   bigjohn756 Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 4:24 pm

    How am I supposed to know what the pictures are about? All of the descriptions are in Dutch.

  8. 8.   DrFlimmer Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 4:24 pm

    This picture is just like the mission: awesome!

  9. 9.   Andy Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    Awesome pictures! I particularly like the one of the earth where you can see what look like vortex/anti-vortex pairs in the clouds.

  10. 10.   MHS Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    The BA linking to Geenstijl.nl… didn’t think I would live to see that :D .

  11. 11.   Jewel Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    Oh, wow. Gorgeous.

  12. 12.   slang Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    the pics come with this commentary:

    Het klussen aan Hubble zit erop. De ruimtetelescoop heeft voor de laatste keer een grote beurt gekregen en begint nu aan de laatste jaren van zijn leven. Ergens na 2020 zal de NASA het gevaarte in de oceaan laten neerplonzen. De enige telescoop in een baan om de Aarde is dan nog de Herschel van ESA.

    Loose translation:

    “The fixing of Hubble is done. The space telescope has had its last big tune-up, and is now starting the last years of its life. Sometime after 2020 NASA will let the big thing splash down in the ocean. The only telescope left in Earth orbit then will be ESA’s Herschel”.

    Herschel isn’t in Earth orbit. Neither is Spitzer, but some other telescopes are. Oh well, Geenstijl isn’t exactly a science blog anyway. :)

  13. 13.   DaveS Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 7:40 pm

    I don’t know, Phil, the picture seems pretty credible, to me. On what do you base your claim that the picture is incredible?

    (OOOh, I like the comment editing feature.)

  14. 14.   Shane Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 8:48 pm

    Fair dinkum, with the last picture of the astronaut looking in through the port hole I LOL’d. Awesome pictures.

  15. 15.   Eddie Janssen Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 1:34 am

    There are two clear pictures of geographical features. The last one looks like a part of the Galapagos Islands. The other one may be Florida. Does anyone know what they really are?

  16. 16.   GQ Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 3:43 am

    Absolutely incredible pictures! I don’t know those guys stand out there in space with only a suit between them and certain death. I would freak out!

    Its so weird how the stars don’t show up in these photos. Adds an even more errie feel to them.

  17. 17.   QUASAR Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 5:05 am

    Good quality!

  18. 18.   Stan9FOS Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 6:24 am

    One is Florida – I can see my old house from there! – just a little south of the Cape – and the Bahamas, the other I’m not sure.

  19. 19.   Johnny Vector Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 7:00 am

    And no pics of ACS Repair. Course that’s because they’d have to be helmet-cam snaps, hence low-res. There was a point where NASA TV switched to the outside camera showing the telescope and shuttle with a beautiful Earth backdrop, in full sun, and I thought how sad that John Grunsfeld had to spend the day inside (the aft shroud). I don’t think he minded.

    Speaking of ACS Repair, the optimization program will likely be cut short, because the very first test images from the Functional Test are showing the same noise levels as the best we got in ground testing (which Oh By The Way is slightly but significantly lower than the noise ACS had before the failure). Take that, Mr. Murphy! Your law doesn’t apply when you’re up against Frank Cepollina!

  20. 20.   Mike Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 7:04 am

    You might try checking out the link below to see if they have any better STIS pics…

    http://io.jsc.nasa.gov/app/collections.cfm?cid=370&ref=blog

  21. 21.   Riley Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 9:23 am

    The other picture of the Earth is of the Canary Islands.

  22. 22.   actuator Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    I watched NASA TV during the last 3 days of the repair. It was amazing that I could be so enthralled for so long with so little verbiage. Those spacewalkers and their supporting crew are absolutely incredibly competent people. I sure hope that schools piped the NASA feed to classrooms. This is the kind of inspirational stuff we need to get out.

  23. 23.   Michael L Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    If you look really close, there is a round object near the bottom of the picture, between the solar panel and the Telescope. I think that this is proof that….

    Oh, wait… never mind. It’s a smudge on my monitor…

  24. 24.   Meg Says:
    May 23rd, 2009 at 2:21 am

    Wow! This is a bautiful picture of Hubble :) .

Leave a Reply





    • About Bad Astronomy


      Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.


      The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.


      Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com


       
      Keep Libel Laws out of Science
       
       Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009.


    • Science Getaways


      Science Getaways: Vacation with your brain!


    • Subscribe to BA


      Subscribe to Bad Astronomy using RSS! RSS feed button


    • Death from the Skies!


      Order a copy of Death from the Skies! from Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.

      "If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?"
      -- Adam Savage, Mythbusters


      "Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
      -- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising


    • Recent Posts

      • An ear to the ocean
      • The staring eye of a crescent moon
      • A hoopy frood
      • When the Moon hits your apse in a way-cool time lapse
      • Volcano in taupe
    • Social/Networking/Cool Stuff


      Google+


       Twitter




       Facebook


    • Post Categories

    • Archives

    • Blogroll

      • Bad Astronomy (old site)
      • Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum
      • BAFacts Archive
      • Commenting Policy
      • Computer Support
      • Contact Information
      • DM: 80 Beats
      • DM: Cosmic Variance
      • DM: Discoblog
      • DM: Gene Expression
      • DM: NERS
      • DM: Science Not Fiction
      • DM: The Intersection
      • DM: The Loom
      • James Randi Educational Foundation
      • My use of the word "denier"
      • Planetary Society Blog
      • Politics and Religion posts
      • Press Kit
      • Q&BA Archive
      • The Antivax Bible
      • Universe Today
    • RSS DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space

      • The staring eye of a crescent moon | Bad Astronomy
      • When the Moon hits your apse in a way-cool time lapse | Bad Astronomy
      • Funhouse galaxy | Bad Astronomy
      • Science Getaways: Update | Bad Astronomy
      • Exoplanet in a triple star system smack dab in the habitable zone | Bad Astronomy
    • RSS DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom

      • Animal Friendships: My cover story for Time magazine
      • The Future of E-books–podcast of my interview on Wisconsin Public Radio
      • Thursday, February 16: Science and social media panel in New York
      • A Scientific Jonah: My profile of Joy Reidenberg in tomorrow’s New York Times
      • Ebooks on the radio: 6 pm ET tonight


  • Kalmbach Publishing Co.

    Copyright © 2012, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

    Privacy - Terms - Reader Services - Subscribe Today - Advertise - About Us