Paul Delaney, senior lecturer and director of the Division of Natural Science in the Faculty of Science & Engineering, spoke to CTV News about the Hubble telescope’s 20th anniversary and its impact on science.
You can watch Delaney’s full interview on CTV’s Web site, which runs for approximately six minutes. Here’s an excerpt:
The Hubble telescope marks two decades in space this month, where it has captured stunning images that have had a profound effect on our understanding of the universe.
And to celebrate, NASA has released a recent image that shows a star factory in action.
York University Paul Delaney said the image of the Carina nebula, one of the largest star formation regions that exists, captures “the wonderful interplay between dust, gas and stellar embryos.”
Although the way stars are formed has been known for some time, there was no way to get a front-row view of the action until Hubble.
“Hubble has been able to peel aside some of the veils which have always annoyed astronomers and gotten right into the deepest parts of star formation areas,” Delaney told CTV News Channel this week.
“It’s a vindication of the stellar evolutionary theories, and that’s really what Hubble has been about,” he said. “It has been able to confirm, deny and advance the theories of astrophysics in such a wonderfully pictorial way.”
In another photo of deep space taken by Hubble with an exposure of one million seconds, or four and a half days, nearly 10,000 galaxies are visible, Delaney said. Some of the galaxies are younger than one billion years old, which means the image allows scientists to see back 12 million years in time.
Hubble looks through many different filters — including ultraviolet and infrared ones — to capture “the full breadth and beauty of the image,” Delaney explained.
Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– York University’s daily e-bulletin.