We have the HST to thank for moving the zeitgeist forward and away from our lame beliefs that we humans are “The Chosen.” This is how the HST will be remembered.

I agree completely about the new instruments, however. WFC3’s IR camera is particularly smoking.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, we had the Shuttle, two major disasters, the First one caused the Public to Question the $$ that NASA got and the viability of a space program. The Second, the public started taking notice more and began to question why NASA was Not protecting their Astronauts with better equipment.

In 1990, Hubble was taken up in a Shuttle, the Public YAWNED, because they were used to how BORING Astronomy was in school, no real focus was put on it at the time.

1971 began an era of the Space Station. The first ones, flown by the USSR were nothing more than two space modules docked together. It wasn’t until Salut 4, in 1974, tile more permanence that lasted more than 1 year began. In total there was 7 Saylut’s. After that the beginning of Mir began (of the total 28 crews, 5 stayed longer than 1 year, and the total average is approx. 130 days), which today is of great national pride of the Russian people, whose station lasted from 1986 until the end of the century. America was not able to keep a station up more than 2 years and only 3 crews, that being Skylab from 1973-1974.

While Skylab had a good deal of interest in the Schools, there was very little public interest.

When Mir came down, there was great interest in the Newly growing ISS (International Space Station, started in 1998, 2 years before Mir came back to earth). The ISS has had a Slow Road, but great interest from the world-wide public.

All of this has been Helpful for Hubble to begin to come into the Public Eye.

And BOY DID IT HIT the Public Eye. The Pictures of the Universe it gives us. A Better Understanding of the Universe around us. Being able to Find a Planet (NO I will NEVER call them “Proto-Planets” OR “Dwarf-Planets”. They are Numerous Miles across, and have Enough Gravity to have Moons, Thus they ARE PLANETS!!!). And Now, NASA has Found Planet X (Makemake), beyond Pluto and about the same size of Pluto (which is 742 miles radius (which is Just smaller than the Moon). Pluto is 7375AU (that is 7,375 time the distance of Earth to Sun), Makemake is 7939AU.

Now, they are able to use Hubble and other space Based Telescopes to Image Planets up to a few Thousand Light-years away (light travels at 186,000 miles per second, and it takes light 8 minutes to get from the Sun to Mars. Mars is 3.4AU).

Hubble’s Impact is Much more Far-Reaching than we may realize for another few hundred years, if Mankind does not destroy itself beforehand, or God doesn’t whisk us away before then.

The major discoveries since 1993, when Hubble was repaired, have come from low-cost ground and space telescopes. For example, exoplanets with a 1.7m ground telescope, the details of the CMB (and incidentally the accurate Hubble constant measure) with WMAP.

One way Hubble has benefited astronomy in general is that US people who get time get substantial grants to do the astronomy with the observations. This has been a major input of NASA funds for people doing actual research.

Interestingly, the Hubble is still pre-eminent. After a long shakedown it started producing images that show that there is nothing quite like being outside the earth’s atmosphere for good seeing. Sure, a ground based scope can outsee the Hubble under certain circumstances, but not as a rule. The Hubble is an amazing machine, and there is no reason it can’t continue producing great images and doing good science for quite some time.

-Jer.

Other results I’d suggest:

- FGS parallaxes for Cepheids (and exoplanets). This knocks out the bottom rungs of the distance ladder, a major change. ADS papers here.

- proper motions for local galaxies. Like the FGS parallaxes above, it’s amazing we can measure these. The results are also surprising — for example, the large motion measured for the Large Magellanic Cloud is shaking people up — either the LMC is just passing through unbound or barely bound to us, or our Galaxy is considerably more massive than assumed.

- gravitational lensing models, strong and weak, for galaxy clusters. With HST’s resolution and sensitivity, a few poster child galaxy clusters became over-constrained problems with robust lensing solutions. Interesting high-z results, important prototyping that paved the path for dedicated weak lensing surveys.

- debris disks around Beta Pictoris and Fomalhout. Mentioned above, but I wanted to add links. Every time I stare at the Fomalhout image, I get goose bumps.

- narrowband imaging of Paschen alpha at z~0. Transformative in terms of robustly establishing star formation rate diagnostics with much less danger of unrecovered extinction.