New Supernova: Hubble Catches Stellar Explosions - Essay Example

We do so by using ground based satellites which are mostly placed on high mountains. However, even though these ground based telescopes have provided us with extremely valuable information they were unable to detect light that does not reach the atmosphere. Therefore, to understand something that is in space, light-years away from us, we need to study and analyze the different electromagnetic radiations that are emitted and with the rapid surge in technological advancement man has successfully installed telescopes in space which has enable us to see things that was never seen before.

The latest scientific ambition of space scientists which has been utterly successful so far is the NASA’s Edwin Hubble Space telescope. The space telescope was launched in 1990 and since then it has helped unravel numerous secrets of the universe and provided researchers with valuable scientific data and photographs of very high resolution which have made space studies far easier than what it had been before. It is perched 350miles above the Earth. So far the Hubble telescope has imaged more than 30,000 celestial objects and taken more than 570,000 pictures (Space telescope Science Institute,p.1) The observatory above the Earth’s atmosphere works all the time to gather data and information about all the different constituents of our Universe, components of the Milky way, galaxies, quasars etc.

The high light gathering power of the Hubble telescopes enable it to take space pictures with immense clarity The major elements of the Hubble telescope consists of : mirrors that collect light from celestial bodies, devices used to analyze the images caught by the mirrors, a spacecraft structure that shelters the mirrors and analyzing instruments and solar arrays. One of most renowned images that the Hubble telescope has provided is the image of Supernovas using which scientists have been able to conclude a lot of things.

Supernovas are extensively bright objects that are formed when an old star has reached its life’s end and explode in space. This explosion expels most of the star’s material into the space. In the year 2003, with the help of newly installed Advanced Camera for Survey (ACS) on the Hubble telescope the first two supernovas had been discovered. This was primarily done by observation of the Hubble Deep Field North with the wide field camera of the ACS that was installed. These observations were taken in May, 2002 in bandpasses F775W and G800L.

The F775W bandpass was meant for 2 orbits while G800L was for 3 orbits. A subsequent observation was made for 3 orbits in the F850LP bandpass. The observation and the images that had been recorded were initially analyzed by the Space Telescope Science Institute. The Institute helped to analyze the images and reduce them down for a more specific observation and further reduction was done with the Apsis GTO data which rejects cosmic ray, detects defects and corrects the image geometrically. After the images had been reduced down, the presence of two highly bright objects were seen that was not present in the 1995 data.

These two objects were designated as SN 2002dc and SN2002 dd and were categorized as 1A supernova subtype (Blackeslee et al, 2003). A similar detection was done in the year 2004 where researchers found 16 new supernovas of subtype 1a with the help of the Hubble space telescope. During the GOODS SCA treasury program observation were