Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa | Hacker News Reader

Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa

spacetelescope.org

211 pointsjmsflknr97 comments

For one Hubble, something like a dozen of Keyhole spy telescopes have been launched [0]. Just imagine the kind of science we would have gotten if we launched a dozen of Hubbles instead...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen

So about the ratio of non-selfies to selfies.

Imagine if those satellites were never made, we wouldn't have had the Hubble space telescope either.

What that says about us, I'm not sure if I want to know.

We’re more interesting.

Having large rockets to launch anything for non-military purposes is a byproduct of the requirement by the military of several nations for the capability to deliver thermonuclear warheads on their adversaries.

It says that we're part predators, part prey animals and as such are more interested in defending our territory and possibly gaining some new territory than we are in gazing at the skies for some purpose which neither the predator nor the prey would recognise. Hard science is a new thing in evolutionary terms, the purpose for which those KH satellites were launched is as old as our species.

The science output of a given device usually shows heavily diminishing returns. I would say 12 Hubbles would have had at most twice the impact of 1 Hubble, probably less.

Definitely agree. However, the long tail will likely include discovering some more 'improbably' results. For example, the researchers who ultimately discovered Phosphine on Venus this week had early requests for observation time on telescopes denied and seemed to have to have been extremely persistent to finally get their chance.

There is definitely a very long, fat tail with scientific research. I think this one of the most under-appreciated aspects of science.

That and the countless unexpected insights and connections between seemingly unrelated pieces of knowledge that can happen long after an initial discovery.

The famous "deep field" image from Hubble almost didn't happen, at least for many more years, due to limited time availability[0].

> “The telescope allocation committee would never have approved such a long, risky project,”

Other similar "high risk" experiments would be more likely to occur if time constraints were not such a concern.

[0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2015/04...

Agreed. I suspect that the impact of added Hubbles would be roughly linear in the number of satellites for at least three or four more satellites.

The bigger question is whether the requisite resources could have a larger combined impact elsewhere by delivering similar advances in astrophysical missions, for which I suspect the answer was correctly judged to be "yes".

Hubble’s replacement, James Webb, could offer us an opportunity to have a second space telescope.

We just need to figure out how to repair the Hubble.

Its not a replacement . Its a successor

Hubble will be gone in 5-10 year.

Whenever it breaks it’s done.

Call the James’s Webb whatever you want. The point is that it would be useful to have both for decades

James Webb isn’t a spy satellite chassis. The Vera Rubins telescope is though

And I really fail to see why we build ONE James Webb. What of there is anomaly at launch? Why not build two? If one fails, we have another. If both launch, we have two telescopes! (Well, I don't know how difficult to have to instruments bobbing around L2 point).

Most of the price of JW is research and development anyway. It will not be 2x the price, it will be much less, so even if we ignore the possible scientific output, from a purely financial perspective two would be a bargain.

I just don't understand why we build one JW, and one Hubble, but we can afford 12 KHs and god know how many other spy telescopes...

First rule in government spending: Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?

If only this was true.

A relevant Contact quote, on the topic of Space?

nicely done.

Wanna take a ride?

I think the James Webb focuses on the near infrared spectrum?

The deep field images are not a significant fraction of the total scientific output of Hubble.

Nope, they are the icons of the project. Images from the edge of reality.

They significantly impacted how I grew up seeing the universe though, and I’m sure I’m not alone on this.

In that case, you're arguing that a greater fraction of time with scientific instruments should be devoted to publicly consumable results. That's fine; I mostly agree. But that's not the claim under discussion, which is whether we would have much more total scientific impact if we had many more Hubbles.

I think one can readily argue (and I'm a physicist, so I really love outward-looking telescopes) that reconnaissance satellites will tend to make the world a more-peaceful place.

Uncertainty can lead humans to make decisions to handle a worst-case scenario that isn't actually taking place. High-quality imaging makes it difficult for nation-states to bluff or to understate the scale of decay/disaster and allows for finer-grained control of military escalation.

We are seeing the next evolution of these effects as ordinary citizens can now get access to imaging systems that were once the realm of the Keyholes. They are journalists and free press in the sky. The internment camps of Xinjiang can't be hidden: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alison_killing/satellit...

We must, of course, be wary of the societal effects of these imaging systems. If only some have access to orbital imaging, the asymmetry in power can be substantial and the norms for privacy can erode.

Also, often times science instruments do sit on those satellites, they just aren't as cool as Hubble.

I worked on a satellite that was outward facing above a Navy satellite.

We wouldn't have got in space w/o the military subsidy, and I think it'll take society a long time to pay off that debt/slough off the infrastructure, but we're starting to make progress.

I do not disagree with this. I wanted to point out an order of magnitude difference between science, and politics (of fear?).

We built nuclear power plants not because we needed electricity, but because we needed plutonium for the bomb. We went to the moon in part because "it is hard", but mainly as a way to stick it to the Russkies. We built space telescopes to spy on the "opponent". Yes, that did indeed kept the world in a balance for quite some time, amazingly, but imagine if we, collectively, were just a tad smarter and instead of this, directed our efforts to science.

You could extend the argument to intra-national competition. What if instead of competing with each other, we were all aligned towards common goals. Unfortunately and sadly, such is human nature that we are hardly motivated by much else than one-upping each other.

This is true. Instead of competing against each other, we -I mean all nations and individuals - should do something to support efforts so that humans can some day escape this planet. Earth is not habitable forever.

I struggle to imagine what could happen to earth to make it less suitable to support human life than any other known planet.

An asteroid strike would make things difficult.

There are many very likely scenarios making this planet unhabitable: asteroid, black hole coming near solar system and moving planet distances, gamma ray burst, any deviation in sun's radiation. All these are clearly possible and likely to happen in the long run.

I think you basically identified the root cause of the issue. We are, unfortunately, only slightly evolved chimpanzees; We would gladly form groups to fight another group when bananas grow sparse.

Had we evolved from bonobos, things might have been different.

reconnaissance satellites will tend to make the world a more-peaceful place.

There is absolutely no evidence of this. The example you cite has not seen any concrete action taken, China is left to act with impunity.

On the contrary, along with imaging military installations of rival states, they are probably mostly used to surveil targets for the ever-expanding global assassination and missile strike program run by the United States. A recent example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Qasem_Soleima...

I think spending some of that money on science (even earth-facing science) would have a far better return in peace dividend, and might actually make the rest of the world view the US as it apparently still sees itself (as the benevolent overseer of world peace).

You won't get much agreement around these parts, where American war imperialism is treated with indifference or, usually, servitude - but I just wanted to say that I see your point and agree with you completely.

The peace that could've been made by spending the funds for a single Keystone on, instead, schools and water plants and hospitals - in the country's the Keystone would be observing... but instead, imperialist war-mongers justify these toys with ever-broader threats of violence and terror.

We should be dropping books, not bombs.

Indeed, Ike proceeded with the U-2 to disprove the Bomber Gap, and ratchet down the tensions and military industrial complex.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap#Disproval_of_gap

There’s so many high energy events out there, to observe.

It's funny when you see people ask things like "if we ever pointed Hubble at Earth, how much detail could we see?"

Ask the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency!

Or refer to that picture Trump printed out of the Iranian (Pakistani?) rocket failure that was apparently being watched with a keyhole satellite..

How many Hubbles could we have made if we didn't have to spend billions of dollars after it launched to fix manufacturing fuckups?

How many?

If the subsequent Hubbles cost as much as the first one was supposed to cost: about 10 Hubbles

If the subsequent Hubbles cost as much as the first one actually cost: about 0.5 Hubbles

It's not totally on apples to apples comparison. There would probably be some cost reductions if you made ten hubbles. On the other hand, some of the servicing missions upgrade or even added instruments, so I suppose you'd need to take that into account

The NRO actually donated a couple suspiciously Hubble-like satellites to NASA a few years ago. They'd removed all the electronics, of course, and the lenses are shaped to better capture terrestrial images, but still! Loose pocket change from the intelligence agencies. Of course, I'm sure Hubble got funded because of Keyhole in the first place.

> the lenses are shaped to better capture terrestrial images,

Hubble's optics don't use lenses. Do you have any evidence that KH-11 satellites use lenses? Also, I could be wrong, but I thought that the orbits of Keyhole satellites are high enough relative to the primary mirror diameters that the difference between focusing something on the earth's surface and focusing at infinity (columated light) is within the mirror polishing tolerances, so for all intents an purposes both Earth observation and astronomical telescopes have mirrors shaped to focus at infinity. Am I wrong?

Is sharper focus what you mean by "better capture terrestrial images"? I thought that the main difference in the mirrors was that image intelligence satellites generally have lower magnification / wider field of view than orbiting astronomical telescopes. If you were to point Hubble at Earth (and not burn out its instruments due to the brightness), I don't think you'd get a less sharp image than you'd get from a mirror ground for image intelligence (assuming same manufacturing tolerances/technology). My understanding is that diffraction and atmospheric distortion dominate the image clarity issues for image intelligence satellites, so there's little to nothing to gain for going narrower field of view / higher magnification.

If we did that, we would not have the luxury of science, having forgotten the necessity of sovereignty.

maybe we did launch that many outward looking satellites. but their images are classified... you wouldn't know, would you?

Imagine what an array of such camera's could do if pointed at one spot in space.

It will be quite sad when Hubble retires. JWST is a superior scientific instrument but I believe something immaterial but very important will be lost when we don't have a high-power visual spectrum telescope overhead. Infrared just doesn't have the ability to fire hearts and minds like visible light.

Looks like a painting. How cool is it that we actually have the technology to finally see these odd planets!?

For a few hundred years now, we've been looking at the planets. Finally makes it sound like we just did this yesterday or within current life times.

For the past few hundred years until recently, we've been seeing bright and fuzzy dots. There's a difference between that, and ~640000 square pixels worth of details we see in the article.

Hubble is not new.

I think we've had really good views of Jupiter for awhile. The Great Red Spot was identified over 300 years ago and tracked consistently for over 100 years. But Jupiter is huge so it's fairly easy to see in relatively good detail.

I think about this a lot. We are the first people in human history to see the planets up close, so to speak.

For thousands of years, humans stared up at the sky and watched these luminous dots change position over time. They made up stories about them, tracked them, designed instruments to turn these blurry, luminous dots into slightly-less-blurry luminous dots.

But in this long human journey of thousands of years, we are the first generation to actually see these dots of light as the worlds they are. Us. You and me. So many thousands of years of ancient dreaming and wondering, going all the way back to our hominid ancestors, gazing at the night sky in wordless wonder.

And we, our generation of humans, are the culmination of this journey of imagination.

What they could only imagine, we know. For the first time in history, in my lifetime, we've visited every planet in the solar system. Any planet you see in the sky? We have photos of it. We've mapped its surface, or visited it directly. You want to know what sunset on Mars looks like? You don't have to guess.

We take this all for granted. I don't think we even appreciate the legacy we inherited. It feels like there should be a Planet Day, where we all celebrate the knowing. Where we symbolically link hands with our ancestors across time, with everyone who ever squinted up at all the little sparkles on the big black ocean and wished they knew what they were.

A day when everyone looks at at least one photograph from every celestial body we've seen, and appreciates the gift we've been given. And then maybe looks at the best photos we have of exoplanets, and realizes that we are in the same position today that our hominid ancestors were, wondering what these places will someday turn out to be, and who we will be when we finally know them.

These images are amazing, but I do feel that we as a society just sort of take them for granted now. However, I would highly recommend finding a local star party in your area. There is nothing like putting your eyeball on a telescope and seeing things for yourself. Yes, it will not be nearly as detailed as NASA images, but it will still impress.

For all of those made up stories you mentioned, I shed a tear every time I hear modern day things like flat earthers. We still have not gotten away from made up stories.

> You want to know what sunset on Mars looks like? You don't have to guess.

Sadly, people on the west coast have seen it in person.

Fun fact: sunsets on Mars are blue.

This would be beautiful, but we need to be able to see the night sky first. Having moved to a large city from a tiny one, no one notices/even cares to look up here. there isnt much to see, I think that makes it meaningless to those who havent stared at a full clear night sky, no light pollution for miles. I'm jealous even with all the comforts you get here, you can't see that image our ancestors got to stare at almost every night(cloud factor).

I looked at the Jupiter and Saturn with a modest 14 inch telescope last week https://www.darkskyproject.co.nz/tours/crater-experience/ The two planets themselves, and the four large moons of Jupiter and of course the rings of Saturn were all very visible, and this kind of old school technology has been available for hundreds of years.

But basically I agree, Hubble and robot planetary exploration are awesome.

How times have changed that a 14" telescope is "modest" :) My first was a 50mm refractor, and I used a 5" Maksutov for the longest time before settling down with an 8" Dob. An 18" truss-tube Dob is in the works.

This is a good month to watch Jupiter from the northern hemisphere. I was able to get a good view of the four moons using a binocular, fern with a lot of light pollution.

How good is the nighttime visibility in New Zealand given its a somewhat isolated island? Here is California I would have drive somewhere out far for it to be dark enough.

It's absolutely insane. It's not just a starry night - it's as if the sky is DRIPPING with stars. Why even go to sleep?

Where about are you looking from?

I live in a smallish city (200K to 500K population, depending on how you define the city bounds). I just stepped out (it's 11pm here) and looked up (it's not normally something I think about). It's pretty reasonable, you can definite see stars by the thousands, some of them very bright. The air here is very clear for city air. Out in the country it's definitely better though. The excursion I linked to was in a very isolated area, the Mackenzie Basin in Canterbury. The local authorities there have picked up this particular ball and are running with it. Recognising that they don't have much light pollution anyway, they have set about minimising what light pollution there is (eg street lighting points down, in general they try to avoid unnecessarily leaking light up). It does make for a genuinely impressive sky on a clear night. The excursion was great. The bus takes you to a very isolated spot, and they give you plenty of dark time to get your night vision working well. Recommended. The youngsters who were acting as tour guides were both from the Northern Hemisphere and they made a point of talking up the Southern sky, saying in general it is more interesting. I don't know much about astronomy and can't judge, but they made a good case. I had no idea that Alpha Centauri is only visible in this hemisphere for example. Maybe astronomy would be a good hobby. It "feels" more profound than chess, C++ programming, and the intersection of the two :- )

If you have a DSLR or similar camera (the lens/objective that comes with DSLRs is usually good enough) and a tripod, you can even photograph moons (plural!) of Jupiter yourself!

To avoid disappointments, I must set expectations correctly, though: they will be no more than a few tiny white dots next to a brighter dot (Jupiter itself) but either way: you will have photographed moons of a different planet all by yourself!

Edit: a few tips if you would like to try: make sure to use a tripod, as holding the camera is not going to work. A delayed release or remote release helps a lot because tiny movements of the camera while pressing the release will show in the image. Don't choose the exposure time too long as this will make Earth's rotation visible. The results are not going to be great but knowing that these are actual moons, hundreds of millions of kilometers away, will be a nice thing anyways.

You can get the moons of Jupiter with a cellphone held up to a small telescope or binoculars.

It never occurred to me that the Great Red Spot would be shrinking. It's logical that storm systems are dynamic (and finite) things, but I find it striking that in another hundred years, people may never think of Jupiter as having such a dramatic feature. And who knows what new ones may have developed.

I suppose that's as much a commentary on how short a time we've been able to witness these phenomena as more than dots in the sky. Especially relative to the timescale they operate on.

As far as the history of it, early sightings may have been other storms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Red_Spot

On a much longer timescale but still within habitability of the Earth (theoretically..), Saturn's rings will also disappear[0]. (300 million years)

[0] https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/794/nasa-research-reveals-...

I'm really disappointed that JWST doesn't support visible light imaging. Maybe there's better science value to non-visible light sources but for PR it is great.

Not sure JSON Web Tokens can see any light really. The JWST on the other hand is meant to see further than what can be seen with visible light. We have bigger mirrors on the ground capturing visible light than what JWST could do.

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Compar...

There's still a spectrum and they can use that for colorization - https://www.space.com/11985-spitzer-space-telescope-photos-i...

Man, I'd love to be able to get a really high resolution print of this framed so I can hang it in my living room.

that'd be really cool! it's an amazing photo

Images hosted by NASA are available to make prints from. Tax dollars funded the images, so the images are made available to the public. If it is hosted from somewhere else where they took the data from NASA and did their own work on it, there could be copyright issues protecting their work. So, find all of the amazing images you like made available by NASA's, and then make your own posters!

Your tax dollars at work: https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2020/42/4739-Im...

I always wish that it was a little easier to find the pages with high resolution downloads of all these amazing NASA telescope and rover images.

It'd be great if they could create one central repository that all of them would go to for people to look through.

https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/

Is pretty good. Can filter by mission, instrument, or target. Resolution is kind of hit or miss, as a lot of it is raw or minimally processed, but that is part of the fun.

is this for just jpl missions or all of NASA?

That's a great resource! Thank you for sharing.

Am I missing something, or is 1663x1663 the best resolution available?

> Researchers say the Great Red Spot now measures about 15 800 kilometres across, big enough to swallow the Earth. The super-storm is still shrinking, as noted in telescopic observations dating back to 1930, but its rate of shrinkage appears to have slowed. The reason for its dwindling size is a complete mystery.

Isn't a storm's slowing down is normal due to loss of energy? Probably am missing some physics 101...

Also, I didn't know there were auroras on Jupiter: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1613a/

I would love to see an image like that combined with a depth map to allow us to move it around and get a sense of the vertical scale of those storms!

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia21107/juno-s-first...

Here is an image of Earth compared to the biggest storm on Jupiter [1] (from 2006). Jupiter is big.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Red_Spot#/media/File:Jup...

What are the odds in our lifetime there will be a probe sent into orbit and then down into the atmosphere with high-resolution cameras that can beam back imagery/video of the entire trip? I think it'd be fascinating to see what it's like both above and while descending through the clouds.

Also, is it possible life could exist in the clouds similar to how we now speculate on Venus?

I imagine it would be as un-spectacular as flying in a plane through clouds. Nothing to see. It would be that all the way to the point the camera melted and/or crushed.

perhaps but I would think the descent before entering the clouds would have plenty to look at..

Video from a low orbit satellite could be pretty spectacular. Especially if it's in a polar orbit and can see in whatever wavelength is necessary to see the weird geometrically symmetrical storms at the poles.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/videos/index.html

Check out "space diving" https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/10/25/358820835...

not from orbit, but from very very very high up.

Kind of neat how it's so far away that there's really no foreshortening of the surface since relatively speaking it's all proportionally the same distance from us. The surface just looks flat and not rounded like a sphere.

Reminds me of the Expanse, just caught up a few nights ago. They spend quite a bit of time on Ganymede and Io in the third season. Imagine looking out the window to see Jupiter taking a significant fraction of the sky. :D

I wish they would send something like the Cassini spacecraft to Jupiter. Just gobs and gobs of eye candy until the sensor gets nuked to bits.

You mean like Juno?

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html

Looks like an oil painting.

Beautiful

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