Stochastic Scribbles
Random musings in a variety of subjects, from science to religion.

New and improved Hubble

By now, you probably all know that the Hubble Space Telescope is back in business after its repairs in May. (Notwithstanding its imaging of the Jupiter impact in July, which was done by taking time out of its calibration phase.) The repairs did not merely replace aging instruments, but replaced them with better instruments incorporating advances in technology. It shows, with recently released images revealing more details than ever before. And what’s more is that each image requires a lot less time to be taken, which means more observations can be done by Hubble.

As an example of how much the Hubble Space Telescope has improved, compare images of NGC 6302, the Butterfly Nebula, taken before and after the repairs.

NGC 6302 (before)
NGC 6302 (after)