Comments on: How is it possible for the Hubble telescope to show galaxy after galaxy?

By: Geoff G

Geoff G — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:18:12 +0000

Galaxies are much farther away than stars so that, even though they are made up of trillions of stars, the are much fainter than stars. Four galaxies are visible with the naked eye, but hundreds of galaxies are visible with an ordinary amateur telescope. In certain parts of the sky, such as regions in Virgo, Coma Berenices, Canes Venatici, and Ursa Major, you literally _do_ see galaxy next to galaxy. Geoff G

By: arslan

arslan — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:07:29 +0000

Because hubble is a more powerful telescope. It can see much farther.
When you look up into the sky, you see millions of stars. What people dont realize is that the space between these stars are filled by other galaxies. You juts can’t see galaxies because they are very far away and dim.

Hubble uses long exposure, collects more photons, so we can see these galaxies very clearly.

Here is one of the most famous pictures the Hubble Telescope took in 1996

Here’s a video: arslan

By: Nyx

Nyx — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 06:56:57 +0000

I’ve observed dozen’s, if not hundreds of galaxies with my “‘little” 11″ telescope. Certainly nowhere near the quality that something the size of Hubble can do, but certainly possible.

How they appear in my scope is frankly, pretty bland. Gray little wisps of elongated fluff in a darker gray sky. Some of the closer galaxies (such as the Andromeda galaxy) can show some detail, like dust lanes, nebula and star clusters. Nyx

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:23:06 +0000

The first thing you must realize is that the Hubble is in space, this allows it to be much much smaller than ground telescopes, and can see much farther. Now imagine you are looking at 1 person 10m away and 10 people 1000m away. The person close to you will look much larger than the 10 people far away. Now imagine the same thing but with a star acting as the 1 person and galaxy acting as 10 people and instead of 10m and 1000m make it 10 light years and 1000 light years. The space a single star takes up in the sky as viewed by the naked eye could be the same space viewed by a telescope looking at 10 galaxies. Andrew

By: zi_xin

zi_xin — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:07:02 +0000

You don’t see galaxy next to galaxy because our eyes, even with the aide of back yard telescopes, are not sensitive enough to see the faint light coming from those galaxies. We can see them with observatory size telescopes. Hubble just give us a better picture. The nearest galaxy is 2 million light years away. That is very far away. Other galaxies are even further than that. You need a very big telescope to see them. zi_xin

By: Donkey_kong

Donkey_kong — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:15:44 +0000

Hubble uses a long exposure to capture these images.

[THIS MEANS]

Hubble’s camera looks through its telescope and instead of taking a normal picture where the shutter snaps and takes a picture - The shutter Is left open for longer so that more light can be collected so you can see the things you would not normally see. Which Is how we are able to see the population of Galaxies In hubble’s Images. Donkey_kong

By: eri

eri — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:27:37 +0000

Hubble can see objects that are much fainter than your eyes. All the stars you see are in our galaxy, but the space between them isn’t full of stars too (in most cases) it just looks empty unless you can look really, really far away like Hubble can - and then you realize there are galaxies everywhere. Very dim ones. eri