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Hubble worried astronomers when he encountered unexpected problems recently, forcing mission scientists to put him into safe mode while they solve the problem. But the space telescope has more than made up for its free time since returning to work on Oct. 26.
"Hubble is back to observe galaxies and stars and implement programs proposed by scientists around the world," said Jennifer Wiseman, lead scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. Maryland.
Hubble recently monitored the collision of distant galaxies. And he has studied eruptions around distant red dwarves, or low-mass stars, to see if the eruptions can fry the planets into orbit, which would probably mean that the worlds are uninhabitable (SN: 24/06/17, p. 18)
Since its launch in 1990, Hubble has provided some of the most captivating images in the universe. On October 5, when he had problems, the telescope operations team quickly discovered the cause: one of Hubble's gyroscopes, which indicates the speed of rotation of the telescope, had malfunctioned (SN online: 10/10/18Scientists activated a spare gyroscope the next day, but it was blocked.
During three weeks of DIY work, NASA engineers asked Hubble to turn around and switch between different modes of operation to eliminate blockage of the spare gyroscope components. The maneuvers worked and the telescope "is functioning normally and smoothly," said Deputy Chief of Mission Helmut Jenkner, based at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
The latest Hubble images published by NASA include a part of the sky showing three galaxies in a cluster of galaxies in the configuration of a smiling face, because the light of a galaxy is gravitationally focused or distorted by the passage of an object massive to appear in smile-shaped bow. Another new image shows the Serpens nebula, which came into being about 1,300 light-years away, with a young star projecting a bat-like shadow onto the surrounding gas clouds. Both images were broken before the Hubble malfunction.
Astronomers are looking forward to Hubble's return. "I have the impression that a member of my family has come out of the hospital!" Says Robert Kirshner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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