It is 25 years since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, with a 15 year mission to unlock secrets about the origins of the Universe. Strictly speaking Hubble’s 25th anniversary is tomorrow, but in the spirit of news programmes announcing what is going to be said or announced before it actually happens, I’m saying Happy Birthday today.
The majority of the amazing pictures now published come courtesy of an upgrade to the imaging system in 2009, incorporating imaging sensors made by e2v, the company I worked at for over 33 years.
25 images have been released celebrating Hubble’s discoveries. Every single one is simply astonishing.
As a slightly different image, this one is of Gary Fildes from Kielder Observatory posing with the engineering test sensor for Hubble, which I took up for him to see whilst at a talk at the observatory. I left them with a GAIA imaging sensor for their school outreach work.
If you have a chance to visit Kielder Observatory then do so, Gary’s enthusiasm is impossible not to get swept up in.