Hubble Space Telescope: How it works

since 1980 this telescope has been
providing us with spectacular images of
space hi I’m Rebecca Brayton and welcome
to watchmojo.com and today we’ll be
learning how the hubble space telescope
works the hubble telescope is the only
telescope that was designed to be
serviced in space by astronauts it is
named after Edwin Hubble the astronomer
who originally discovered the universe
is expanding the Hubble makes an orbit
around the earth every 96 or 97 minutes
at this speed you could travel across
the United States in about 10 minutes
the Hubble is about the size of a large
tractor-trailer truck the telescope
orbits 366 miles or 589 kilometers above
the earth outside of its atmosphere the
Hubble’s position makes it possible for
the telescope to provide views of the
universe that greatly have do anything
possible from ground-based telescopes a
Space Telescope is also able to observe
ultraviolet and infrared light which are
strongly absorbed by the atmosphere the
Hubble is a cast grain reflector this
type of telescope features a set of two
mirrors one convex and one concave light
enters the telescope and travels to the
primary concave mirror the light bounces
from the primary surface to the
secondary convex mirror from here the
secondary mirror focuses the light
through a hole in the center of the
primary mirror which leads to the
Hubble’s science instruments each
instrument studies the light in a
different way a telescopes primary
objective is not as many people believe
to magnify objects it is to capture more
light than is possible by the naked eye
it is the size of a telescopes mirror
that affects how much light it can
collect the bigger the better by
ground-based telescope standards the
Hubble is not particularly big its
primary mirror measures 94.5 inches or
2.4 meters in diameter however its
location outside the atmosphere is what
gives the Hubble’s images such clarity