Composite image shows nearly 1 million of the Hubble Telescopes exposures

The Hubble telescope is arguably one of the greatest accomplishments man has achieved. Its estimated that the Hubble has made about 1.4 million observations since it was first launched into space in 1990.

Dr. Casey Handmer, who has earned a Ph.D in the Theoretical AstroPhysics Including Relativity and Cosmology (TAPIR) group at Caltech. Created a fantastic composite image that includes most of Hubble’s observations. The composite includes 936,236 data points from the Hubble telescope observations.

Pop Photo quotes Handmer, ‘Of course, while Hubble has imaging instruments, many observations are focused on spectroscopy, which is looking at the rainbow spectrum of light produced by the object under study. But I think it’s fair to say that light from 0.8% of the sky has hit the imaging plane of Hubble.’ Dr. Handmer isn’t sure whether 0.8% of the sky is much more, or much less, than he expected Hubble to have observed.

Seen in the image above is the Ecliptic of the solar system (the S curved through the middle). You can also see many different galaxies, represented by the millions of dots / blobs. Its incredible to think how big the solar system actually is, and that this is only about 0.8% of it.

Below is the Hubble Ultra Deep Image. Something Dr. Handmer considers to be one of the most incredible images our species has been able to produce.

Astro Gear

Truly incredible what technology we have been able to produce. If you are looking at getting into Astro Photography we have some great gear for this. From fast lenses to star trackers and telecopes.