Hubble Exhibit a Journey Through Time
by Peter Burkey
January 25, 2008
One of the most famous objects in the sky is the Hubble Space Telescope. Besides being the source of many astounding discoveries, it has also provided us with views of the universe that are unparalleled in their beauty.
Now West Michigan residents may enjoy 30 of the finest Hubble photographs at the Muskegon Museum of Art (http://www.muskegonartmuseum.org/exhibitions.htm) in an exhibit called “Heavens Above: Photographs of the Universe from the Hubble Space Telescope”. The exhibit runs through March 16.
In fact, you may experience a little bit of time travel while viewing these pictures. Mark Voit, Professor of Astronomy at Michigan State University, explained how during a presentation he made for the opening of the exhibit. Since the light travels at a fixed speed, it takes time for it to make the trip between the object being photographed and Earth. Although the speed of light is very fast ( 8 times around the Earth in one second) the objects in the pictures are very far away so light that takes less than a millionth of a second to travel the length of a football field would take almost an hour and a half to get to Saturn, over four years to the nearest star, and 1500 years to the Orion Nebula. That means we are seeing these things as they appeared that long ago. Not much changes in a millionth of a second, but when we view distant galaxies, we see them as they were billions of years ago, when they were quite young and quite different.
At the opening, Dr. Voit took the audience on a journey trough time beginning with Hubble photos of the solar system. In one extraordinary picture could be seen a volcano erupting on one of the moons of Jupiter.
We then entered the realm of the stars, clusters and nebulae. We saw them as they were hundreds to thousands of years ago.
Our final stop was the distant galaxies mentioned earlier. Some were so far away they appeared to us as they were before the Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. The exhibit also includes time lapse photos of a star that exploded and computer simulations of colliding galaxies which I found to be extremely interesting.
After his presentation, I asked Dr. Voit how any one astronomer is able to use the telescope for his or her research. Each year a call for proposals goes out to the astronomical community. Of the more than 1000 submissions, about 200 are accepted and observing times are then assigned.
I also learned that his most interesting Hubble observation involved images formed by gravitational lensing, and the most memorable event he has witnessed as an amateur astronomer was a display of the Aurora Borealis right here in Michigan. My last question concerned the direction of future astronomical research which Dr. Voit feels will be the search for and study of planets around other stars.
I highly recommend this wonderful exhibit and encourage you to take the time to see it. In this way the Hubble Space Telescope will be completing one of its most important functions - making the wonders of the universe available to us all.