Hubble: 20 Years; Amazing Pictures; Serious Science

Source: Hubblesite.org

"Starry-Eyed Hubble Celebrates 20 Years of Awe and Discovery"
HubbleSite (April 22, 2010)

"NASA's best-recognized, longest-lived, and most prolific space observatory zooms past a threshold of 20 years of operation this month. On April 24, 1990, the space shuttle and crew of STS-31 were launched to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope into a low Earth orbit. What followed was one of the most remarkable sagas of the space age. Hubble's unprecedented capabilities made it one of the most powerful science instruments ever conceived by humans, and certainly the one most embraced by the public. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research, from planetary science to cosmology...."

In short, Hubble's a pretty big deal. And it's 20 years old. Yesterday.

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