April 12, 2020 9:00 pm

Monday, Neil deGrasse Tyson Celebrates 30 Years of the Hubble Space Telescope

It’s one of the greatest scientific instruments ever built by humanity. It has revealed secrets of the cosmos, made us ponder our place in the universe, and helped us connect to the cosmic perspective. And, it’s got a lot more mileage left in the tank.

On this week’s episode of StarTalk Radio, Neil deGrasse Tyson celebrates the 30^th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. Joined in-studio by comic co-host Chuck Nice and Jennifer Wiseman, PhD, astrophysicist and senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope, we’re answering your fan-submitted Cosmic Queries on all things Hubble.

We start with a question I’ve certainly wondered myself: How do we decide where to point Hubble? You’ll learn about the proposal selection process that allots Hubble viewing time for different scientific research. Jennifer tells us about the massive archive, available to everyone, storing past Hubble research projects and data. You’ll also find out about “director discretionary time” which allows for the Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute to point Hubble in certain directions that might not have been chosen during the typical proposal selection. Jennifer tells us about one of the most famous uses of this time, when Hubble pointed to “nowhere” that resulted in the iconic Hubble Deep Field image.

Jennifer gives us two or three discoveries to reference when someone asks you what Hubble does and you don’t want to simply reply that  “it takes cool pictures.” You’ll hear about Hubble’s work in discovering supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies and its work investigating the expansion of the universe. We also discuss how Hubble peers into dark matter and dark energy.

Is it better to look in a specific spot in the sky or should a telescope try and capture the whole sky? Jennifer explains why the answer is both. We ponder which projects will be the most important for the decade to come and what Hubble’s involvement will be in those projects. Explore how Hubble is used in conjunction with probes like Jupiter’s Juno probe and the New Horizons probe to Pluto. Lastly, Jennifer reveals how long she thinks Hubble will last and if it could ever be bought by a private company. All that, plus, she shares her favorite Hubble discovery!

Please join us tomorrow for Cosmic Queries – Hubble Space Telescope at 3pm ET right here on our website, as well as on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn. If you’re a StarTalk+ Patron or an All-Access subscriber, you can watch or listen to this episode ad-free at 3pm, too.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
-Ian Mullen