I borrowed this from another forum but this is beautiful. You have to watch this one. http://wires.news.com.au/special/mm/030811-hubble.htm Hope it works.
Very cool. I remember when Hubble was first sent up and they had made a mistake with the shaping of the lens. The media called it rubble...etc... It is nice that it was retrofitted and ultimately produced such stunning pictures.
Apparantly, if my memory serves me rightly, the lens was made in one factory where they worked in inches, yet NASA was giving details in milimeters so the angles were out! D'oh! (not totally sure of accuracy of this)
I'm not sure about that mis-metricilization but Mars Polar Lander, a few years ago and a billion $$$, thought it was landing in US measurements when it's retro rocket thruster was setup in metric.. Whoop-whoop-pull up---pull up... Kaboom!
I especially enjoyed the photo where the galactic gas clouds formed the words OFF TOPIC. (Hint for the next posting of space photos in the GENERAL DISCUSSION area: mention the HORSE HEAD nebula!)
rico, it was nothing like that. The lenses produced something called a spherical aberration. It's a well known phenomenon that most first year physics students learn about. The fact that such a glaringly obvious problem was not accounted for was the problem...it was fixed by that all-important NASA mission that put the space program back in favour with the politicians. NASA had been close to losing major funding until that repair mission. That the repair mission was accomplished successfully was truly amazing. The astronauts that did the space walks were wearing gloves that made it impossible to feel the screws they were using. And one of them even dropped a critical, irreplaceable screw. Miraculously, he managed to catch it again. It's unbelievable how these guys stay so cool under so much pressure.
Unless I'm very much mistaken, it was us British that were at fault for the Hubble problem. Can't remeber why, but sorry!