First images from rejuvenated Hubble unveiled

Astronomers declared NASA's Hubble Space Telescope a fully rejuvenated observatory with the release today of observations from four of its six operating science instruments. Sen. Barbara Mikulski unveiled the images at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Topping the list of new views are colourful, multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie 'pillar of creation,' and a 'butterfly' nebula.

'This marks a new beginning for Hubble,' said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. 'The telescope was given an extreme makeover and now is significantly more powerful than ever, well-equipped to last into the next decade.'

'I fought for the Hubble repair mission because Hubble is the people's telescope,' said Mikulski, chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA. 'I also fought for Hubble because it constantly rewrites the science textbooks. It has more discoveries than any other science mission. Hubble is our greatest example of our astronauts working together with scientists to show American leadership and ingenuity. I want to salute Team Hubble - everyone who worked on Hubble from the Goddard Space Flight Centre and Space Telescope Science Institute scientists in Maryland, to the ground crew at the Kennedy Space Centre, to the Johnson Space Centre where the astronauts train, and to the astronauts who were heroes in space.'

The new instruments are more sensitive to light and, therefore, will improve Hubble's observing efficiency significantly. It is able to complete observations in a fraction of the time that was needed with prior generations of Hubble instruments. The space observatory today is significantly more powerful than it ever has been. Hubble's suite of new instruments allows it to study the Universe across a wide swath of the light spectrum, from ultraviolet all the way to near-infrared. In addition, scientists released spectroscopic observations that slice across billions of light-years to probe the cosmic-web structure of the Universe and map the distribution of elements that are fundamental to life as we know it.

For the past three months, scientists and engineers at the Space Telescope Science Institute and Goddard have been focusing, testing, and calibrating the instruments. Hubble is one of the most complex space telescopes ever launched, and the Hubble servicing mission astronauts performed major surgery on the 19-year-old observatory's multiple systems. This orbital verification phase was interrupted briefly 19 July to observe Jupiter in the aftermath of a collision with a suspected comet.

Hubble now enters a phase of full science observations. The demand for observing time will be intense. Observations will range from studying the population of Kuiper Belt objects at the fringe of our solar system to surveying the birth of planets around other stars and probing the composition and structure of extrasolar planet atmospheres. There are ambitious plans to take the deepest-ever near-infrared portrait of the Universe to reveal never-before-seen infant galaxies that existed when the Universe was less than 500 million years old. Other planned observations will attempt to shed light on the behaviour of dark energy, a repulsive force that is pushing the Universe apart at an ever-faster rate.