WEBVTT FILE 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 ]