Talk:Hubble Space Telescope

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June 2005 — October 2007


Contents

[edit] Vandalism revert: double check?

I was looking through the edit history and noticed that 10k of the article was lost to vandalism from a school ip during the last week. (diff here). I restored the lost content by pasting it back in (to keep the good edits made since), but if anyone out there could do a check, to make sure I got it all - to be sure to be sure? :O). FlowerpotmaN·(t) 23:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Minor correction. And by 10Kb, I did of course mean 3.5Kb :O) FlowerpotmaN·(t) 00:05, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Indentation?

The top of the page, the first couple paragraphs, are v. difficult to read. I'm going to indent them and see if that helps. Any reason for me not to? The rest of the article appears to have indents. ---edit- okay, it's not all indented. alright, i'm going to leave as is, then , if only for uniformity. 24.74.141.22 (talk) 20:00, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Exposure Time Calculator Update

In the archived discussion, there is a link to an older (no longer operational) version of the exposure time calculator for ACS. The newest version of the HST ETCs can be found at:

http://etc.stsci.edu/webetc/index.jsp

Dfmclean (talk) 13:20, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] disambig

breakthrough and mike griffin need disambig Randomblue (talk) 22:42, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Momentum Wheels

If possible, add that they are used to point the telescope —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.205.229.220 (talk) 23:07, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tense?

Much of the article is written in past tense ("Anyone could have applied for time", "Calls for proposals were issued roughly annually"...), but surely the telescope is still operational? Jpatokal (talk) 06:27, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Interesting point. Correcting the tense makes sense - especially since it appears that it will be operational for another 5-10 years. Dfmclean (talk) 16:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The change of tense was just stupid vandalism that no-one picked up on [1]. This is a chronic failing of Wikipedia. It just needs on act of vandalism to go unnoticed and the article is seriously undermined. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.117.167.25 (talk) 15:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Featured article review

Just so nobody misses it, please see Wikipedia:Featured article review/Hubble Space Telescope. Currently expressed concerns are the length of the lead, referencing (format?), and "a few short paragraphs". -- Rick Block (talk) 04:00, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the lead is too long, and has too much detailed info (and the info is repeated later). I will try a re-write of this section. LouScheffer (talk) 15:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Consolidated references

There were 5 references that are referred to multiple times, are available on-line, and form the basis for most of the information in the article. Also, there is so much on the web about the Hubble that it's fairly hard to figure out where to start if you are looking for information. So I took these 5 references (Spitzer's article, the Marshall history, the Allen failure report, the detailed repair document, and the Operations Primer) and moved them explicitly to the top of the references, with a short description of each. Then the references to these documents are of the form Dunar, p. 508 which makes editing much easier.

I think this is more helpful, but if your opinion differs please let me know, LouScheffer (talk) 06:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Awkward Intro Bits...

Quote: "However, following the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, the fifth servicing mission, initially planned for 2004, was canceled on safety grounds. After spirited public discussion, NASA reconsidered this position." My question is, what position? I think there was something in there before the "discussion" bit, but got deleted. So, just revisit this and flesh it out. I would, but I have no idea what used to be here, or what it should say.  ;) Queerbubbles | Leave me Some Love 16:19, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, I tried to make this more clear - that the position was that a Hubble service flight was too dangerous. Is this what you meant, or did you want more detail? (If so, another problem was that the lead paragraphs were too long, so that's why 'spirited public discussion' points to longer discussion of the issues). LouScheffer (talk) 21:30, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Well see, its my understanding that NASA was interested in cancelling the service missions altogether. If so, this "position" that is mentioned it not mentioned previously... so therefore its just an awkward sentence. So that was my issue, but then again, I could be entirely wrong. Now see, if that was the case, then that missing bit would describe that position NASA was reconsidering... especially if there was public discussion. The way it reads now is that they cancelled the 5th mission because of safety, still leaving open the option for others in the future. Anywhoo... I hope this is understood. If not, perhaps I can reword it. Queerbubbles | Leave me Some Love 22:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
There was only one more mission, anyway. They are several years apart, and the Shuttle is to be retired in 2010. So there is no difference in practice between approving one more, and approving them in general, or cancelling them all, or just cancelling the last one. There is only time for one more servicing mission anyway. LouScheffer (talk) 02:02, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
There is only one more PLANNED, but one of the pieces being installed will make docking/capture by non-shuttle vehicles easier and there is some discussion of yet another servicing mission. There's no way of knowing what will actually happen. Dfmclean (talk) 11:36, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Regardless of the intricacies (thanks for teaching me, though), my issue was of the awknardness of the sentence, which is now very well written and explained! Yay! Queerbubbles | Leave me Some Love 12:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Layout of lead section

On both Firefox and IE, the lead section had a large blank space at the bottom right, below the infobox and next to the table of contents. This looked like a great place to put the exploded view of the Hubble, where you could make it big enough to read the labels without taking any more room. So I moved the diagram here. It works well on Firefox, but IE now moves the table of contents down to match the image, negating most of the space savings. Any suggestions for how to add the image so that this does not happen are appreciated. Thanks, LouScheffer (talk) 15:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, a different image placement seems to work OK on both IE and Firefox. If there are problems with other browsers, please let me know. Thanks, LouScheffer (talk) 15:50, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, there is a problem if one clicks the Hide on the Table of Contents. Then the exploded diagram intrudes into "Proposals and precursors", infact it sandwiches the text between itself and the Lyman Spitzer photo on displays of 1200 pixels wide. With 1000 pixel wide displays it almost cuts the text above the photo off. This happens on both Firefox and Opera. With 1300 pixel wide displays on Firefox odd things happen such as "Spitzer devoted much of his " being completely covered by his own picture. But Opera shows Ok. Maybe this is a known mediawiki bug ? I'm on Vista with latest Firefox and Opera browsers. -84.223.115.201 (talk) 15:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gravitational lensing?

Does the HST sometimes use Gravitational lensing? --CyclePat (talk) 19:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

  • HST has taken pictures of regions of space where gravitational lensing was observed and the effects were used to enhance the science value of the image. So, to be precise, HST takes advantage of gravitation lensing when it occurs naturally, but can't create it. Dfmclean (talk) 19:23, 20 May 2008 (UTC)