Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!bingvaxu!sunybcs!rutgers!att!cbnewsl!sw
From: sw@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (Stuart Warmink)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Hubble Space Telescope
Summary: Well, no, not quite...(mild flames)
Message-ID: <578@cbnewsl.ATT.COM>
Date: 9 May 89 17:52:21 GMT
References: <21551@srcsip.UUCP>
Organization: Interface Systems @ AT&T Bell Labs
Lines: 51

In article <21551@srcsip.UUCP>, rogers@falcon.SRC.Honeywell.COM (Brynn Rogers) writes:
 > I have heard that the HST should see some thing like 10 Billion light years
 > out, 

The"distance" it can see out to rather depends on what it is looking at!

 > past the edge of the Big Bang.  This should give lots of data to 
 > support or deny the Big Bang. (At least thats what I understand)

The "edge of the Big Bang"? Is that related to "The Restaurant at the End
of the Universe"?  :-)

 > How good will it be at looking at Planets?
    
Pretty good.

 > I don't think anyone has ever got a picture of pluto and it's moon (charron?)

Yes, pictures have been taken of the two bodies - using very sensitive CCD
devices if I am not mistaken; that is how Charon was discovered. In fact, 
after the discovery, some "old" negatives which include Pluto have also shown 
the characteristic "bulge" caused by Charon. At the time, no-one noticed this 
small distortion as it was thought to be caused by turbulence, grains in the 
negative, etc.

By an amazing stroke of luck, Pluto and Charon are going through a series of 
mutual eclipses just about now, allowing much more accurate measurements of 
Pluto's and Charon's surface reflectivities to be made. If Charon had been 
discovered a few years later, it would have been a *long* time before those 
measurements could be made, as the eclipses occur only twice in Pluto's orbit 
around the Sun.

 > [ Pluto is really a twin planet, right? ]

Perhaps "twin moon" is a better way of looking at it, according to the latest
estimates (rocky core, water ice mantle and methane/water ice crust).

 > Will it take good pictures of Mars,Jupiter,...? (better than viking,voyager?)

Not even close! (no pun intended) HST's resolution is about 5 times that of
the best Earth based instruments.

 > How about the surface of mercury?

It is convex, unlike water, which is concave (with glass).  ;-)
Hey, wouldn't this stuff be great for sci.astro?
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Captain, I see no reason to stand here  |  Stuart Warmink, Whippany, NJ, USA
 and be insulted" - Spock                | sw@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (att!cbnewsl!sw)
-------------------------> My opinions are just that <------------------------