1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,090 [ INTENSE MUSIC ] 2 00:00:07,090 --> 00:00:11,386 -We have lock, and are good to send that command. We have thirty-one minutes and thirty-two 3 00:00:11,386 --> 00:00:15,432 seconds for our support. 4 00:00:15,432 --> 00:00:18,601 Go for status buffer dump. 5 00:00:18,601 --> 00:00:22,605 -What you're looking at with a telescope, of course, is the light from billions of light-years 6 00:00:22,605 --> 00:00:27,152 away. So the further you look, the more you're going back towards the Big Bang and 7 00:00:27,152 --> 00:00:30,905 understanding how the universe was formed. 8 00:00:30,905 --> 00:00:36,327 -The Webb telescope will be groundbreaking because it has capabilities that are different 9 00:00:36,327 --> 00:00:39,080 than the Hubble Space Telescope. 10 00:00:39,080 --> 00:00:43,710 -We have equipment that is so much more powerful than anything we've ever had before, that 11 00:00:43,710 --> 00:00:47,797 it's almost impossible to tell what we will discover. 12 00:00:47,797 --> 00:00:52,969 Hubble Eye In The Sky 13 00:00:52,969 --> 00:00:59,100 Episode 3: Time Machines 14 00:00:59,100 --> 00:01:01,895 -Hubble's accomplishments include something 15 00:01:01,895 --> 00:01:03,938 called the deep fields. 16 00:01:03,938 --> 00:01:09,903 Looking out into space and collecting light, sometimes for many days, 17 00:01:09,903 --> 00:01:12,489 these deep fields have revealed visually to us, 18 00:01:12,489 --> 00:01:18,661 a universe absolutely teaming with galaxies, hundreds of billions of galaxies. 19 00:01:22,165 --> 00:01:24,626 -One of the neat things about the Ultra Deep Field, 20 00:01:24,626 --> 00:01:26,544 and one of the things that made it so unique, 21 00:01:26,544 --> 00:01:28,254 was how long it took us 22 00:01:28,254 --> 00:01:31,382 to take that image. There's an exposure time that's expressed, 23 00:01:31,382 --> 00:01:36,346 I think it's 11.2 days. It’s a very, very long exposure time, but probably what's more 24 00:01:36,346 --> 00:01:42,936 important is how many orbits it took us to do that. 400 orbits of Hubble data to take 25 00:01:42,936 --> 00:01:47,232 that image. You only get 15 orbits a day. To take 400 26 00:01:47,232 --> 00:01:53,363 orbits and say we're going to observe this one spot in the sky for 400 orbits, and the 27 00:01:53,363 --> 00:01:58,952 really unique thing about that was they picked a spot where there wasn't anything. They looked 28 00:01:58,952 --> 00:02:03,873 and they said there's absolutely nothing here. And they said, you want to spend 400 Hubble 29 00:02:03,873 --> 00:02:08,711 orbits looking at nothing? And they said yes, because we want to see what it can see. And 30 00:02:08,711 --> 00:02:18,721 I think the results from the science, I mean it was amazing. What they saw was spectacular. 31 00:02:18,721 --> 00:02:21,516 -Hubble had spent two weeks taking pictures of empty places 32 00:02:21,516 --> 00:02:23,893 in the sky. And they saw they weren't empty at all 33 00:02:23,893 --> 00:02:26,271 there were thousands and thousands of galaxies. 34 00:02:28,606 --> 00:02:31,818 -We were amazed how many galaxies we found, 35 00:02:31,818 --> 00:02:33,653 and we continued to go back to that 36 00:02:33,653 --> 00:02:40,410 portion of the sky to increase that visibility. 37 00:02:40,410 --> 00:02:47,292 -The Hubble Space Telescope is an outstanding time machine. 38 00:02:47,292 --> 00:02:51,713 It's incredibly important for our studies with the Hubble Space Telescope to realize 39 00:02:51,713 --> 00:02:58,261 that when we're looking at a galaxy, we're seeing it as it was millions of years ago, 40 00:02:58,261 --> 00:03:03,266 sometimes billions of years ago. It's taken that long for the light to get to us. 41 00:03:03,266 --> 00:03:05,268 -What you're looking at with a telescope, of course, 42 00:03:05,268 --> 00:03:08,229 is the light from billions of light-years away. 43 00:03:08,229 --> 00:03:10,815 So the further you look, the more you're going back towards 44 00:03:10,815 --> 00:03:16,196 the Big Bang and understanding how the universe was formed. 45 00:03:16,196 --> 00:03:21,659 -What Hubble has revealed is that the universe has in fact changed over these billions of 46 00:03:21,659 --> 00:03:28,791 years of time. The early galaxies, the very distant ones as we see them, are simple. Sometimes 47 00:03:28,791 --> 00:03:33,504 they're messy looking, they're small. They haven't had time yet to form that grand 48 00:03:33,504 --> 00:03:38,218 spiral structure. Over time, we see galaxies actually merging 49 00:03:38,218 --> 00:03:43,181 with other galaxies and growing bigger and bigger, and those mergers can look like train 50 00:03:43,181 --> 00:03:44,807 wrecks in our Hubble images. 51 00:03:51,731 --> 00:03:55,485 -These very, very deep exposures that Hubble has been able to take, we have seen right to 52 00:03:55,485 --> 00:04:01,199 the edge of the universe, thirteen and a half billion years. 53 00:04:01,199 --> 00:04:04,702 When Hubble was first designed and envisioned, it was never thought it could actually see 54 00:04:04,702 --> 00:04:09,415 that far out. But because of the advances in the instruments that we've been able to 55 00:04:09,415 --> 00:04:13,711 put up on the telescope, and also the cleverness of the scientists, they've come up with very 56 00:04:13,711 --> 00:04:18,007 interesting observing scenarios, doing these really deep exposures, where we just sit there 57 00:04:18,007 --> 00:04:22,929 for orbit after orbit, after orbit gathering the photons, we’ve been able to push Hubble 58 00:04:22,929 --> 00:04:26,933 out very, very far. 59 00:04:26,933 --> 00:04:33,606 -As Hubble looks out into these fields of galaxies, we sometimes see clusters of galaxies. These 60 00:04:33,606 --> 00:04:38,945 are galaxies that are held nearby each other by their mutual gravity. 61 00:04:38,945 --> 00:04:46,869 These clusters are massive conglomerations. There's so much mass that they have an actual 62 00:04:46,869 --> 00:04:54,919 observable impact on space-time itself. Einstein predicted that mass distorts space, 63 00:04:54,919 --> 00:04:59,215 but we didn't realize we could actually see the effects of that. But with Hubble, we have 64 00:04:59,215 --> 00:05:05,513 been able to see distortions in space around clusters of galaxies. The way we see that 65 00:05:05,513 --> 00:05:11,769 is when light from a background galaxy travels through that cluster of galaxies, or around 66 00:05:11,769 --> 00:05:17,400 it, due to this gravitational lensing effect. The lensing also magnifies that background 67 00:05:17,400 --> 00:05:22,947 galaxy, so if we look in some of these distorted arcs, we can see more detail than we would 68 00:05:22,947 --> 00:05:28,453 ever have been able to see without gravitational lensing, nature’s boost. 69 00:05:32,290 --> 00:05:36,377 -There are observations where we're explicitly looking for the lensing and 70 00:05:36,377 --> 00:05:39,547 we're getting science out of that just otherwise 71 00:05:39,547 --> 00:05:43,718 would just not be doable. Hubble has really taken that 72 00:05:43,718 --> 00:05:47,096 to a next level. It's doing large amounts 73 00:05:47,096 --> 00:05:50,433 of astrophysics that it's just never been able to do before. 74 00:05:55,313 --> 00:06:01,069 -Some of what we're doing with Hubble is to prepare for the new James Webb telescope, 75 00:06:01,069 --> 00:06:07,075 which we anticipate launching in 2021, which will be able to see farther into the infrared 76 00:06:07,075 --> 00:06:14,207 part of the electromagnetic spectrum. That enables us to see some galaxies that are difficult 77 00:06:14,207 --> 00:06:20,797 for Hubble to see because they're so far away that their light is traveling through us through 78 00:06:20,797 --> 00:06:26,803 expanding space and gets stretched out into redder wavelengths, often far into the infrared 79 00:06:26,803 --> 00:06:32,308 part of the spectrum. Even sometimes beyond what Hubble is able to detect well. The Webb 80 00:06:32,308 --> 00:06:38,064 telescope will give us more information about some of those very distant galaxies. 81 00:06:38,064 --> 00:06:43,444 -The James Webb Space Telescope is the follow-on telescope after the great Hubble telescope. 82 00:06:43,444 --> 00:06:47,532 It extends the discoveries of Hubble into the infrared spectrum region. 83 00:06:49,450 --> 00:06:53,371 We think that the first objects that grew out of the Big Bang material probably happened 84 00:06:53,371 --> 00:06:58,960 in about a hundred million years after the start. And we think the Webb telescope can 85 00:06:58,960 --> 00:07:04,173 pick them up. They're rare, they're hard to find, but they should be there. 86 00:07:04,173 --> 00:07:08,678 The farthest we've been able to see with the Hubble telescope goes back about 600 - 800 87 00:07:08,678 --> 00:07:13,891 million years after the expansion began, so we think we get much, much closer to the 88 00:07:13,891 --> 00:07:18,187 first objects with the Webb telescope. 89 00:07:18,187 --> 00:07:20,982 -Hubble gives information that the Webb telescope cannot give about 90 00:07:20,982 --> 00:07:24,861 visible and ultraviolet emission from things in the universe, 91 00:07:24,861 --> 00:07:26,821 and when we have all of that information coming in 92 00:07:26,821 --> 00:07:32,577 at the same time, it's like a banquet of scientific return. 93 00:07:32,577 --> 00:07:37,165 -Now when we get the complete picture of every wavelength you can possibly see from ultraviolet 94 00:07:37,165 --> 00:07:40,168 to infrared, we hope to have the story of the growth 95 00:07:40,168 --> 00:07:42,795 of the first galaxies from the primordial material. 96 00:07:42,795 --> 00:07:46,632 So that will be a huge accomplishment that depends on both pieces 97 00:07:46,632 --> 00:07:51,971 of equipment, the Hubble telescope and the James Webb telescope working together. 98 00:07:51,971 --> 00:07:56,058 -So, astronomers are very excited about this probability that we'll have both the Hubble 99 00:07:56,058 --> 00:08:01,022 Space Telescope and the Webb telescope operating at the same time for quite a few years. That 100 00:08:01,022 --> 00:08:04,901 will give us an abundance of new understanding about the universe. 101 00:08:04,901 --> 00:08:11,449 And already right now with Hubble, we're doing preparatory observations for the Webb telescope. 102 00:08:11,449 --> 00:08:16,329 We're using Hubble to do things, for example, like surveying distant galaxies to find out 103 00:08:16,329 --> 00:08:20,958 which ones would be prime targets for the Webb telescope. 104 00:08:20,958 --> 00:08:27,590 In fact, scientists around the world are proposing observations with Hubble right now specifically 105 00:08:27,590 --> 00:08:32,553 to help us learn information that will be useful for making the best use of the Webb 106 00:08:32,553 --> 00:08:39,435 telescope as soon as it's launched and gets going in its science observations. 107 00:08:39,435 --> 00:08:43,231 -I think the Hubble telescope has been the most productive science instrument ever built. 108 00:08:43,272 --> 00:08:47,193 In astronomy, there's what we knew before Hubble, and now, there's what we know after 109 00:08:47,193 --> 00:08:48,486 Hubble. They're so different. 110 00:08:48,486 --> 00:08:52,698 Of course, Hubble has now had a life of 30 years, so it's had a long time to make this 111 00:08:52,698 --> 00:08:57,912 revolution happen. So it's not all at once. It's a gradual revolution, but it's still 112 00:08:57,912 --> 00:09:00,915 a huge revolution. 113 00:09:00,915 --> 00:09:05,461 Knowledge has changed dramatically over the 30 years of life of the Hubble telescope, 114 00:09:05,461 --> 00:09:09,549 so you couldn't even have imagined when the Hubble was launched that we would have the 115 00:09:09,549 --> 00:09:13,135 wonderful cameras and spectrometers that we fly today. 116 00:09:13,135 --> 00:09:17,306 We figured out how to send astronauts, we trained the astronauts, we figured out what 117 00:09:17,306 --> 00:09:20,893 instruments could be put in. We figured out how to repair everything that went wrong on 118 00:09:20,893 --> 00:09:25,189 the Hubble, and it's still alive today, 30 years after launch. 119 00:09:25,189 --> 00:09:30,027 I am so thrilled to say that our people were able to do that. 120 00:09:30,027 --> 00:09:34,115 That's the operations team that makes this possible. It's a miracle as far as I'm concerned, 121 00:09:34,115 --> 00:09:36,784 because it didn't have to be that way, but they made it happen. 122 00:09:36,784 --> 00:09:44,208 Hubble Eye In The Sky 123 00:09:44,208 --> 00:09:51,173 [ INTENSE MUSIC ]