After Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope has been up there more than twenty years. After two decades of discovery it is starting to show its age and sadly it is unlikely to be still operating by the time it celebrates twenty five years in orbit. NASA and ESA are already working on a successor, the James Webb Space Telescope for launch in 2013. We will talk more about this amazing project in future posts but now just compare the main mirrors of the two instruments. For telescopes, mirror diameter is the key statistic, a bigger mirror means fainter objects can be resolved in greater detail.

The JWST will be considerably more capable, but will it still have the same place in people's hearts as Hubble?






Image credit: NASA

The Oldest Star Chart?

In 1940 four French teenagers discovered an amazing gallery of prehistoric art. Painted some 17,000 year ago the painted caves of Lascaux are famed worldwide for their vivid portrayals of bulls, horses and antelope. The paintings have long been thought to have been of religious significance to the artists who created them. However could there been an astronomical purpose to them? Among the artwork seems to be the oldest known astronomy images.
Painted on to the wall of one chamber are a bull, a strange birdman and a bird which appears to be on the end of a stick. According to Dr Michael Rappenglueck of the University of Munich, the eyes of the bull, birdman and bird represent the three prominent stars Vega, Deneb and Altair. In other words they represent the Summer Triangle. This asterism includes parts of the constellations of Lyra, Cygnus and Altair. Interestingly, when the painting were made these constellations would have been circumpolar, never setting below the horizon.

Still more striking is one painting of a bull (above). It seems certain that just beside the bull is the Pleiades, the beautiful open cluster also known as the Seven Sisters. Today, the Pleiades is part of the constellation of Taurus. Taurus is of course the Bull. It seems extraordinary, but it seems people were looking up and seeing a bull in this part of the night sky for the past 17,000 years!

This is truly amazing; surely there is nothing else in our culture, legends and mental landscape that goes back so far into the mists of time.
Image credit: BBC

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Welcome to our official blog. From here, we at Astronomy Images will share the wonders of the Universe. Apart from explaining what is out there and how we know about them, we will cover exciting news from the frontiers of space and anything else interesting we come across. It ought to be a wild ride!

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