HUBBLE TURNS 20
In the daily grind of life, it can be quite easy to forget that we are inhabitants of a vast universe; that we reside on the third smallest planet in a system of nine revolving around a medium sized star in a galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars.
An image of the Carina Nebula taken by the Hubble Telescope in February 2010
The Hubble Space Telescope, however, has been reminding us of that fact for the better part of two decades. The Telescope, which was launched on April 24, 1990, has been in orbit for 20 years providing imagery and data, allowing astronomers to make a number of breakthroughs in the field which include dating the universe to about 15 billion years and proving that the universe is still expanding.
Named after arguably one of the most famous astronomers, Edwin P. Hubble, the telescope orbits Earth every 96 minutes, 360 miles above the surface of our planet, at a speed of five miles per second.
