Thursday, October 30, 2008

10 or .10?

Is perfect? Or just a tenth of a percent of perfection?

NASA announced some good news today, the Hubble Space Telescope is back in action and sending cool pictures back to Earth again.

The above pic, which they're calling "a perfect 10" was the first released after engineers convinced the orbiting spyglass to switch to its back-up data transmission channel last week.

The reason for the name? Well, if you look closely, the galaxy on the left looks kinda like a "1" and the galaxy on the right looks a "0." Put them together and you've got a 10.

But I'm thinking if you take the really bright star or galaxy on the far left into account, the image is just a .10.

Don't get me wrong, it's a cool picture and I'm rooting for the guys heading there early next year for a delayed repair job (they're bringing up parts to fix the problem that shut it down in September). Once everything is shipshape, the Hubble is expected to keep working and sending us beautiful pictures for another five or so years until 2013 or even longer.

It's funny how something that was once a joke is now one of the most valuable scientific instruments ever conceived by man. Me? I think they should keep fixing it for as long as possible.

2 comments:

Lemmonex said...

Apropos of nothing, this makes me think of a HUGE argument two former coworkers had about space exploration...which lead to one of them never sitting in the lunch room again.

FoggyDew said...

Lemmy, lemme guess, one was in favor, one against? I had the same "discussion" with a former coworker. She didn't think the space program had anything to offer us and thought it should be done away with. Wow, do people get angry when you demonstrate how wrong they are.