The Man Behind Hubble: Bob Williams :: Shuttle Astronomy Space Essays

The Man Behind Hubble Bob Williams four weeks after space-walking shuttle Endeavour astronauts repaired the Hubble Space Telescope in declination 1993, an ecstatic Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski waved a Hubble picture of the core of the spiral coltsfoot M100 at her naysaying colleagues. Today, Mikulski could host a Capitol Hill star party The orbiting reach has generated more than 100,000 photos of celestial objects, including a cemetery of dying stars, elephant trunks of body and hydrogen gas twisting in the Eagle Nebula, jovian storms and aurorae, the granitic rings of Saturn and the colossal supernova smoke rings blown from an exploded star, to proclivity a few. Hubbles pictures do double duty not only as congressional lobbying props, but also as screen savers, T-shirt prints, schedule photos, a background for the Babylon 5 science fiction TV serial and even planet trading cards to be provided soon to schoolchildren. angiotensin converting enzyme of the most electrifyi ng pictures of all, the Hubble Deep Field image began literally as a shot in the dark the sum of 342 exposures taken with Hubbles unsubtle Field and Planetary Camera 2 in December 1995 of a black speck of northern sky. Although the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impact on Jupiter whitethorn have generated a bigger media splash, astronomers still are agog everywhere the Deep Field. Aides to Vice President Al Gore tenacious a Deep Field poster from the Space Telescope knowledge Institute (STScI), which manages the Hubbles science program under contract with NASA. Borrowing a page from Mikulski, Gore plans to use the Deep Field poster to fire scientific research in the next millennium. In an age of cost-cutting and smaller-is-preferred, the $3 billion Hubble has demonstrated that bigger can be better The telescope attracted 1,298 proposals for observing time during its next annual cycle that began in July, an plus of 30 percent from the previous cycle and more than had been received by a ny other U.S. telescope or NASA project. Ever. A driving depict behind Hubbles scientific mission, particularly the Deep Field, is astronomer Bob Williams, 56, who took everyplace as director of the STScI a few months before the 1993 repair mission. alike(p) Hubble itself, Williams began his astronomy career with high promise, then was written off as lacking focus. Both have rebounded spectacularly. Williams is admired as an articulate support of astronomy with a penchant for accomplishment. There is not a shifty molecule in his body, says Ray Weymann, an astronomer at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, who worn-out(a) many nights collaborating with Williams in the quiet and darkness of telescope towers.