A new photo of Mars from the Hubble Telescope

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/19/11715340/nasa-mars-photograph-sun-opposition-hubble-space-telescope

by Tomte • 10 years ago

79 21 10 years ago

mholt• 10 years ago

NASA's Instagram post has a surprising amount of detail in the photo description that helped orient me to the features in the photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/BFmwqJNIaLU/

solipsism• 10 years ago

The article from NASA themselves is a lot better, with a lot more information: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/new-hubble-portrait...

Yuioup• 10 years ago

Also, the headline is less click-baity.

djaychela• 10 years ago

And the site doesn't auto play audio at high volume and wake your girlfriend when she's asleep but you can't!

nitrogen2• 10 years ago

Just shows a black page on mobile Firefox, but works in mobile Chrome.

throwaway_exer• 10 years ago

I always thought Mars was red and dusty. That image looks more like Earth than not!

photonwins• 10 years ago

Some more images from ISRO MOM.

http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25-mars-orbiter-mission/picture...

piyush_soni• 10 years ago

Thanks for the link. This image out of all posted there compares directly to the one taken by Hubble : http://www.isro.gov.in/sites/default/files/galleries/Picture...

brianpgordon3• 10 years ago

At a cost of $10 billion I still think the Hubble is one of the best investments that high science has offered us. The images it produces have to be the most fascinating and valuable pieces of data humanity has ever produced.

Hubble's successor, the James Webb, is scheduled to launch in a couple of years. It will orbit the Sun rather than the Earth (at the L2 Earth-Sun Lagrange point) with a mirror more than twice the diameter of Hubble's. The images that it will produce are expected to be even more stunning than Hubble's. These are truly great times we're living in.

mamurphy• 10 years ago

I knew little about Larange points[0] or the James Webb[1] before reading your comment and spending 10 minutes on Wikipedia. The L2 is a stable orbit with the Earth between the L2 point and the sun; the Webb is a telescope that seems twice as large as the Hubble scheduled for launch in 2018. Fascinating stuff!

As noted in the Webb article:

The JWST will operate near the Earth-Sun L2 (Lagrange) point, approximately 1,500,000 km (930,000 mi) beyond the Earth. Objects near this point can orbit the Sun in synchrony with the Earth, allowing the telescope to remain at a roughly constant distance and use a single sunshield to block heat and light from the Sun and Earth. This will keep the temperature of the spacecraft below 50 K (−220 °C; −370 °F), necessary for infrared observations.

There's a great picture[2] on Wikipedia comparing sizes of major telescopes.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_optical_telesc...

sliverstorm• 10 years ago

Idle speculation, but I wonder if the distance will impair service, repair and upgrades, all of which I believe Hubble has benefited from

ajnin• 10 years ago

The L2 orbit is not a stable one, it is an unstable equilibrium point in the gravitation field of Earth and the Sun, so objects at this point or in orbit around it will slowly drift away and will need small active trajectory corrections to stay around.

Ileca• 10 years ago

There was a lot of "great times" if we are talking about tech development. It was also a great time to board a locomotive at the beginning of the XIX century. Then, I think a great time not too abstract would be to actually go to Mars more than looking at pictures.

brianpgordon3• 10 years ago

For now I think of manned space exploration as a vanity. It's so ludicrously expensive compared to robotic exploration that, in my mind, it's impossible to justify. It's just "cool."

Eventually we'll need manned spaceflight to escape this rock, but we have more pressing concerns at the moment.

jackbravo• 10 years ago

Could someone provide a link to the high res photo?

A new photo of Mars from the Hubble Telescope

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