What was the reaction to the Hubble telescope's pictures?

[revv]

I was just wondering what the reaction was from people and the media at the time after hubble's telescope took it's famous images?

If I am not mistaken hubble's images where one of a kind showing that there where a lot of galaxies and whatnot out there.

Was it advertised on the news a long time or was it just briefly shown? And how did people react? I tried to search for reactions to hubbles images but couldn't find anything just the reaction from nasa.

 

[Drakkith]

I was just wondering what the reaction was from people and the media at the time after hubble's telescope took it's famous images?

Which images are you referring to? The HST has taken many famous images over its lifespan. The initial images taken just after the HST was launched are not "pretty", as the mirror for the telescope was ground to the wrong shape and suffered from fairly serious aberrations. It wasn't until 1993 that corrective optics were installed and high-quality images could be obtained.

 

[Chronos]

I believe the op is thinking of the Hubble deep field images. Scientists [and the media] were understandably quite impressed. As noted, the early Hubble images were pretty underwhelming. That caused a bit of a panic when it was realized the mirror was misfigured. It prompted an historic shuttle mission to install a corrector, which was heralded as one of the greatest successes of the shuttle and extended the life of both programs.. The Hubble subsequently earned accolades as a wonder of the scientific world . Hopes are its successor, the JWST, will be half as astounding.

 

[Drakkith]

The Hubble subsequently earned accolades as a wonder of the scientific world . Hopes are its successor, the JWST, will be half as astounding.

It's amazing that the HST has been operational for more than 27 years. That's almost older than myself, but I'm betting @phinds already had his "old man pants" by that point.

*Old man pants are those really comfy pants you wear around the house all the time. The one's you've had for so long they've molded themselves to fit you correctly. They're also the ones that, for some unknown reason, supremely embarrass your wife when you wear them out and about.

 

[phinds]

It's amazing that the HST has been operational for more than 27 years. That's almost older than myself, but I'm betting @phinds already had his "old man pants" by that point.

Hey, I was old when the pyramids were young but I don't WEAR old man pants, I just get grumpy.

 

[1oldman2]

Whilst discussing Hubble I thought I may as well toss in some info I've collected.
There is talk of another service mission using the Dream Chaser when it comes online. This appears to be a contingency plan in case JWST has problems.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/offici...sion-to-refurbish-hubble-telescope-1486927198

the early Hubble images were pretty underwhelming.

To say the least, for example this shot of M-15 is typical of the quality before the famous fix..

Page #44 tells the story rather well.
https://www.princeton.edu/cee/news/archive/OpticsAndPhotonicsNewsMarch2013.pdf
Since then Hubble has produced hundreds of thousands of images and well over 100 terabytes of data, not too shabby considering its beginning.
http://hubblesite.org/

 

[cordwainer]

The reaction was pretty much unanimous astonishment, excitement, and wonder. It's interesting that Robert Williams, the director of the project, went ahead with it despite the number of colleagues who tried to discourage him from wasting 10 days of expensive telescope time on what could have been just an empty region of space. The potential for yet another Hubble public-relations embarrassment was huge. There was no guarantee the final images would show much of anything.

I remember reading somewhere that when the original Deep Field image was presented publicly for the first time - at a session of the American Astronomical Society in 1996 - the entire auditorium went absolutely silent at first in pure shock. It was said a lone voice was heard whispering in that silence, "My God...we know nothing." I can't document that, and probably the story was either apocryphal or somewhat dramatized. Nonetheless, it fairly well sums up the overall reaction of a majority of astronomers and astrophysicists.

As far as the rest of the world, well, National Geographic put it like this: "The image now known as the Hubble Deep Field captivated pretty much everyone. To say it was a triumph would be an understatement." (http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/24/when-hubble-stared-at-nothing-for-100-hours/)

The owner of the Deep Astronomy website wrote: "Probably more than any other image I've ever seen, the Hubble Deep Field has profoundly changed my perspective on the universe and our place in it. When I first saw the image, and then learned how it was taken, I was forever changed by it."

That's not even an unusual reaction. The image, and the story of its creation, was all over the mainstream media. Millions of people downloaded it to share, use as their desktop background, or just stare at more closely. It moved people, intellectually and spiritually, some of them in an almost religious sense. Even people who hated science were amazed at how beautiful it was, astonished that what it showed were not stars but galaxies, "strewn like jewels" across infinity.

You might enjoy browsing the book, Hubble Deep Field: How a Photo Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Universe (by Don Nardo; with content advisor Dr. Frank Summers, Outreach Astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute). The beginning, for example, describes the scepticism and opposition the project faced, which makes the final result all the more marvelous.

Portions can be read for free on Google Books at https://books.google.com/books?id=M...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

A few quotes from one news release at the time:

"Gazing into this small field, Hubble uncovered a bewildering assortment of at least 1,500 galaxies at various stages of evolution."

"The variety of galaxies we see is amazing. In time these Hubble data could turn out to be the double helix of galaxy formation. We are clearly seeing some of the galaxies as they were more than ten billion years ago, in the process of formation."

"As the images have come up on our screens, we have not been able to keep from wondering if we might somehow be seeing our own origins in all of this. The past ten days have been an unbelievable experience."

"One of the great legacies of the Hubble Telescope will be these deep images of the sky showing galaxies to the faintest possible limits with the greatest possible clarity from here out to the very horizon of the universe."

The image data are so important (the astronomical equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls, one scientist quipped) they are being made available immediately to astronomers around the world to pursue research on the formation of galaxies and for probing basic questions about the structure and evolution of the universe.​

 

[revv]

Wow that gave me chills! I will definitely check out those books thank you.

 

[russ_watters]

HUDF is the background image on my website. Hubble took plenty of pretty pictures, but those two speak to everyone.

 

[trainman2001]

It was so profound that it's forced astronomers to change their estimates of the number of galaxies in the known universe to be in the trillions not billions. They have now assumed that there are galaxies out of view even beyond those seen and based on that estimate changed their thoughts. It has effected non-astronomers too. We just returned from Hawaii. The Hyatt Regency Resort in Maui has a resident astronomer and has two nice Celestrons permanently set up on the roof. They have a star watch program which my wife and I attended. One of the other guests, just a regular guy, said he wasn't really interested in the Cosmos until seeing that picture. It blew his mind (mine too). One of the telescopes, a 15" Casegrain, made a beautiful image of the Herculean Cluster. I have a small Meade ETX-125, but it can't resolve that.

 

[Ernest S Walton]

So they took a picture of an empty patch of sky and found fainter galaxies... well what did the media expect, a sign saying 'this is the end of the Universe'?

 

[mfb]

Not as many galaxies as they found, probably, and not necessarily so many different types of galaxies.

 

[stefan r]

I did not see any Hubble images before 1999. Then it was the http://hubblesite.org/images/news/release/1995-44. On internet not on main media.

People trained in media look for value differently. The definitions of "newsworthy" and "worthy of notice" are very different. "Astronomers do their job well and take excellent pictures" would not be news. "Drunk astronomers break $100 million telescope" would be news. Cassini was in the news in the late 90s because crowds of people were protesting. Cassini got news coverage again in 2017 because NASA crashed it into Saturn. Everything in between was "astronomy" not "news".

 

[newjerseyrunner]

I think there was a lot of excitement. It looks like both the Cat's Eye Nebula and The Pillars of Creation were featured on the cover of National Geographic in the 90s.

 

[russ_watters]

60 Minutes did a piece on Hubble this past Sunday, including a little section on the HDF:

https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/vast/

 

[sophiecentaur]

*Old man pants are those really comfy pants you wear around the house all the time.

It always makes me smile because in the UK. Pants means Underpants / Grundies / Y Fronts etc.. Separated by a common language again.

 

[wukunlin]

The initial images taken just after the HST was launched are not "pretty", as the mirror for the telescope was ground to the wrong shape and suffered from fairly serious aberrations. It wasn't until 1993 that corrective optics were installed and high-quality images could be obtained.

The first time I learned about the HST was through a book that had some details on this part. Apparently only 15% of the light signal was of any use. Despite still having the better imaging ability than the telescopes on Earth, it was ridiculed as the "biggest piece of junk made by man" and "pile of trash sent to space" on certain news agencies.
After the HST got its eye operation though, it amazed a lot of people. Apparently the image quality became a lot better than originally intended.

 

[sophiecentaur]

At the time Hubble was first fired up, people were pretty impressed - much more than we were in hindsight. Pictures were published that the public hadn't seen before and the project didn't come in for much serious criticism air first. Let's face it, they were pretty damned impressive for anyone who didn't;t know better and NASA never said they were rubbish!
And let's face it. The sexiest bit of human activity in Space must surely be shown in the TV coverage of the mission to improve the optics. If it had worked right first time we would never have seen that. It was bread and butter Engineering done by a low key team of Astronauts and carried out as we would all like to have done it ourselves.
I believe that testing and sorting our the optics before it was launched would have cost an awful lot of money so that saving has to be set against the cost of the Shuttle Mission and then what fantastic kudos it earned them.

 

[phinds]

At the time Hubble was first fired up, people were pretty impressed - much more than we were in hindsight. Pictures were published that the public hadn't seen before and the project didn't come in for much serious criticism air first. Let's face it, they were pretty damned impressive for anyone who didn't;t know better and NASA never said they were rubbish!

The original optical aberration was a VERY big deal inside NASA and Charlie Pellerin, the Project Leader, was understandably utterly devastated when the error came to light. He and his team worked night and day for weeks 'til a fix was found (and I mean literally --- they were just catnapping in the lab some nights). I worked with Charile in the Sounding Rocket Division at Goddard Space Flight Center in the late 60's and early 70's when he was an experimenter on the rockets for which I (and others) designed and built the telemetry systems. He was a very serious and dedicated guy and I was sure that if anybody could pull off the fix he could.

I read an article recently that basically said the fix was fairly easy and just a matter of sticking in a few small mirrors. Well, yes, it WAS easy. After they figured out what to do. When they started out, the consensus was that the problem was not even fixable and they had just put a billion dollar dud into space but they were not about to give up and they did come up with the "easy" solution eventually after much weeping and gnashing of teeth and probably more than a few cuss words.

The installation was pretty tricky too. I saw a TV show about the whole thing and the astronaut who did the spacewalk to put the new module in said it was a very tight fit and scared the hell out of her when at first it didn't seem to want to go in, but then it just slid right in and she could breathe again.

 

[Drakkith]

I believe that testing and sorting our the optics before it was launched would have cost an awful lot of money so that saving has to be set against the cost of the Shuttle Mission and then what fantastic kudos it earned them.

I'm not sure what you mean, sophie. The optics were tested extensively prior to launch. But the testing was done incorrectly and there were numerous opportunities to correct the error which were neither recognized nor acted upon by the management at the company making the mirror. NASA itself was criticized for not performing its own testing, which would I don't believe would have been that expensive. Especially compared to the cost of finding and correcting the error after the telescope was in space.

 

[phinds]

I'm not sure what you mean, sophie. The optics were tested extensively prior to launch. But the testing was done incorrectly and there were numerous opportunities to correct the error which were neither recognized nor acted upon by the management at the company making the mirror. NASA itself was criticized for not performing its own testing, which would I don't believe would have been that expensive. Especially compared to the cost of finding and correcting the error after the telescope was in space.

Exactly. Charlie was blamed* (and felt that he deserved it) and he was sure his career was over but he came back from it.

* Not by name in public. It was blamed on a "management error" but HE was the management in question.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I'm not sure what you mean, sophie.

The optics were tested extensively prior to launch.

I heard that the individual parts were tested but an overall test was considered not to be worth it. The reason for not doing the tests would surely have been financial. But I may have been ill informed about the real situation.
Wasn't there something about the original design being suitable for Earth Surveillance?

 

[Drakkith]

I heard that the individual parts were tested but an overall test was considered not to be worth it.

Ah, okay. I believe you are correct. A test of the entire system wasn't done after it was assembled.

 

[mfb]

I believe that testing and sorting our the optics before it was launched would have cost an awful lot of money so that saving has to be set against the cost of the Shuttle Mission and then what fantastic kudos it earned them.

Certainly much less than the repair mission.

Well, NASA has learned from it - JWST is tested extensively on the ground now. Fixing it in space would also be much more difficult as it won't be in Earth orbit.