Source: Freepik
As many of you may know, the journey of telescopes first began with Galileo Galilei. In this innovation, Galilei could see that Earth had neighboring planets, but he could not see that there were more that were even in the solar system. Larger telescopes were innovated in society and still, their scope did not reach as far as they hoped.
It was until the Hubble Telescope where they could see further and past the solar system. Interestingly, as the telescopes were limited by Earth’s atmosphere and unclear view of the planets, the Hubble Telescope would be launched into space where it would not be limited to the conditions of Earth. However, the first mission failed horribly, as the passengers of the spacecraft were killed as it exploded.
Still, the scientists at NASA did not give up even with irrepairable damage towards personal and financial burdens. In their second launch they successfully launched and retreated the Hubble Telescope back to Earth, the only problem was that the images were blurry and could not detect any cosmic presence out there. Even then, scientists did not give in and agreed that the mission would be destined for success.
After trial and error they eventually found clear images and went far past the solar system. Finding other galaxies and debunking old myths as there was presence outside of the Milky Way galaxy. They began finding galaxy after galaxy and came up with over three thousand galaxies through the Hubble Telescope.
Along with these discoveries, scientists found potential planets with sustainable life like Kepler 22b, and planets with potential extraterrestrial life like Formalhaut b. Furthermore, the scientists were able to find the first clear image of a black hole through the Hubble Telescope as of recently. Through all of these discoveries, the scientists were able to map out all of the cosmic entities that the Hubble Telescope is able to view, known as the Observable Universe.
Obviously, there is more presence outside of the Observable Universe, but we can only hope that the Hubble Space Telescope will expand in scope and uncover new discoveries and debunk more myths.
References
Tillman, N. T. (2022, January 30). Hubble Space Telescope: Pictures, facts & history. Space.com. https://www.space.com/15892-hubble-space-telescope.html