Why do they say the Hubble Telescope can look into the past?
Bonanza asked:
I’ve heard that scientists have said that the Hubble Telescope can see so far that it looks into the past. What does this mean exactly?
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I’ve heard that scientists have said that the Hubble Telescope can see so far that it looks into the past. What does this mean exactly?
July 7th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Because light takes time to travel. If you see an object a billion light years away, you are receiving images from a billion years ago.
July 10th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Because everything or most of what we and the telescope see is not there anymore, because the light from stars are so far away that they take years to disappear from our view
July 12th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Let say a normal night, you go out and you look at the stars…what you see isnt the present but the past, same goes with the sun when you look at the sun what you see is how it were 8minutes ago so what you see isnt the actul current position of it….cuz 8mins is how long it takes the sunlight to travel the 93 million miles journey
so if you see a star 4000 light years away that means the light you see was emitted 4000 years ago and that’s how long it has taken to reach you but in real time that star may have exploded and you wouldnt be able to see the explosion untill 4000 years later!!
July 15th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Not only hubble, but your eye can look past. The Sun when u see it, it is as it was about 8.3 minutes back.The Alpha centuary is about 4.3 years back and andromeda galaxy is 2 million years back!
This is because light take time to travel.U see an object by the light from them.Light takes time to travel, the more distance, the more time.
July 17th, 2009 at 4:38 am
Light takes time to travel the huge distances from the faraway objects that Hubble can image.
Lets take a galaxy that is 5 billion light years away. The light we see today actually left the object 5 billion years ago - we are seeing the object as it was THEN, not as it is today.
July 17th, 2009 at 6:11 am
well technically anyone can look into the past, in the sense that light travels with a finite, constant speed - so that light you recieve now was emitted some time ago - in the case of the stars, many years ago. you see the moon as it was about a second ago - not such a big deal, but it’s still equally true that you see it as it was in the past. hubble can see further than most other telescopes, so can also see further into the universe’s past.
July 20th, 2009 at 6:02 am
A geologist can determent the history of Earth by looking at the age of the rocks the lower he looks down the older the rocks are and from there he can learn our planet’s history and the age of are planet.
Similarly astronomers can determent the history of the universe by looking farther into space; for example M31 The Andromeda Galaxy is 2 million light years away from us; this means it took the light from the galaxy 2 million years to get here. In fact when you look at the Andromeda Galaxy through your telescope you are not seeing as it is now, you are actually seeing as it was 2 millions ago. So when you look at farther galaxies you are looking farther back in time.
With the Hubble Space Telescope astronomers can study galaxies that are too far to be seen by Earth based telescopes and therefore looking all the way back in time toward the Big Bang about 15 billion years ago.
July 22nd, 2009 at 7:50 am
the hubble telescope can see things very far away, and because it takes light a certain amount of time to travel, the farther away an object, the farther back in time we are seeing it. So the image of a distant galaxy might actually be of it a few hundred, thousand, or even million years ago depending on how far the light took to get to us. (for example, the light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach earth so technically we are seeing the sun from 8 minutes ago).
The hubble has made some fascinating discoveries, to learn more about it I’m putting a link below