Speaking of Hubble...

The Greek physician Hippocrates of Cos (ca. 460 – 377 BCE), said once: “avoid all citations from the poets, for to quote from them argues feeble industry.” He did not have a similar opinion about citations of scientific results.

These days, the Hubble Space Telescope has passed yet another milestone. There have been more than 300,000 citations in scientific papers to results based on Hubble data. To be precise, on November 5, 2009, the number of citations was 301,373.

Think about this for a moment. This means that on average, every day since Hubble’s launch, there have been more than 40 citations to Hubble-based research!

One could hardly have expected a higher level of scientific impact. No wonder then, that when particle physicists expressed their ambitions for the Large Hadron Collider – the enormous particle accelerator near Geneva – they said that they “hope the machine will be a sort of Hubble Space Telescope of inner space.”

I have always argued that no person is truly irreplaceable. I still believe that to be the case. However, my colleague and friend Rodger Doxsey came probably as close as anyone ever could to being irreplaceable. I know of no one who had a deeper and more thorough understanding of the workings of the Hubble Space Telescope than Rodger. Rodger passed away on October 13, 2009, at the age of 62.

Usually when we retire a computer, we make sure that all the information on it is stored elsewhere. Unfortunately we cannot do the same with the human brain.

For the past two decades, Rodger was driven by one passion – the desire to make the Hubble Space Telescope the most productive scientific instrument ever.

Here is a description by another Hubble pioneer, John Bahcall, of the birth of the “Hubble Space Telescope Snapshot Program,” a wonderful example of one of Rodger’s many brainchildren:

“The Snapshot program originated in a lunchtime conversation between Rodger Doxsey and myself in the STScI cafeteria sometime in the spring of 1989. We were both late to lunch and probably were the only people in the cafeteria. The principal topic of conversation was the expected low observing efficiency of the HST. Rodger described the extraordinary difficulty in making a schedule that would use a reasonable percentage of the available time for science observations. Slewing was slow and changing instruments or modes of observing was time-consuming. Also, the scheduling software that existed in 1989 was not very powerful.

I asked Rodger, without thinking very carefully about what I was saying, if it would be possible for the software he was developing to insert new objects in the holes in the schedule. I wondered aloud if one could improve the efficiency by choosing new objects, close to the directions of the scheduled targets, from a previously prepared list of interesting objects scattered over the sky. I remember that Rodger suddenly became very quiet, thought about the question, and finally replied something like: ‘In principle, it is possible.’ The Snapshot program was born at that lunch.”

Very few people know of a ritual Rodger and I have developed over the years. During the first servicing mission and subsequent observatory verification, Rodger and I followed all the tests for the instruments at the Institute. After the performance test of each instrument, we shook hands ceremoniously. This became somewhat of a superstition, and consequently, in all the following servicing missions we continued with the same ritual. During SM4, Rodger was already too weak to attend all the activities continuously. We did meet, however, after the completion of SM4, and performed the ritualistic handshake to celebrate all the instruments.

Goodbye friend. To me, you are irreplaceable.

Stephan's Quintet, one of the first images from the renovated Hubble Space Telescope.

On September 10, 2009, in the evening, the Hubble Space Telescope obtained its 900,000th exposure since its launch in April 1990!

Not all, of course, were exposures of celestial objects (some were taken for calibration purposes), but still, think about it for a moment — Hubble has created an album of hundreds of thousands of images of the universe. I am reminded of the words of the American poet Jean Toomer, who wrote once:

Beyond plants are animals,

Beyond animals is man,

Beyond man is the universe.

Hubble has allowed us to actually see that cosmos which is beyond us, and has given us a chance to decipher the laws that govern its workings. With all the instruments on board Hubble now working, we can look forward to a period of great scientific productivity, and even more breathtaking images.

Mario Livio (left) and Institute Director Matt Mountain (center) greet Servicing Mission 4 Commander Scott Altman.

The astronauts that performed the recent spectacular servicing on the Hubble Space Telescope, came to visit our workplace, the Space Telescope Science Institute, on July 21, 2009.

I have never seen the Institute’s staff so excited, nor have I ever seen our cafeteria so packed. Staff members brought their families, to share in the moment. The crew members were as wonderful as always: friendly, humorous, smart, and just so cool. Commander Scott “Scooter” Altman, with his usual generosity, told me: “You are the people who do the real work with this telescope, we are so grateful that you have allowed us to be a part of this.”

“Sure,” I replied, “but we don’t risk our lives for this work. We are the ones who are truly grateful.”
The presentations, the pictures, the autographs, the hand shakes, all passed almost too quickly. Einstein taught us that time is relative. When you are in good company, even six hours feel like five minutes.

And then it was time for them to leave. Megan McArthur and I hugged. I was thinking of something to say, and then she said: “Until next time.”

“Indeed,” I was happy to confirm. For some reason there were tears in my eyes.

Last week I was invited to give a talk in New York, as part of a series called “Geeking Out,” intended for a lay audience interested in science.

Somewhat to my surprise, the talk took place in an art gallery in
Brooklyn. Talks about science in an art gallery? Were we not told by popular psychologists that the artistic types rely more on the right side of the brain, while the mathematical geeks rely more on the left side?

Actually, serious neuroscience research shows this characterization to be way too simplistic — we all use both hemispheres of our brain. And the New York audience, who paid great attention to both the talks and the art on the walls, proved this to be absolutely true.

At some level, scientists and artists have a lot in common. They both use creativity to express the interaction between human perception and the universe. The scientists try to explain what they perceive, the artists attempt to convey it in a different form. Images taken by Hubble have blurred the distinction between science and art even further.

People react to Hubble images, which were taken for scientific purposes, with the same admiration usually reserved for artistic masterpieces. Indeed, Hubble images have been displayed in a major art museum, and one British journalist described Hubble images as “possibly the greatest art works of our time.” Science and art can, and perhaps even should, go hand in hand.

The Hubble Space Telescope, after having been released from Space Shuttle Atlantis.

“The Magnificent Seven” was a 1960 American western, about a group of gunmen that protect a Mexican village from bandits. The movie was an Americanized version of the film “The Seven Samurai,” by the legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.

To me, the true magnificent seven are: Scott Altman, Greg Johnson, Megan McArthur, John Grunsfeld, Drew Feustel, Mike Massimino, and Mike Good — the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis that has just finished servicing the Hubble Space Telescope.

Now that the Atlantis has landed safely, we can say without reservation that this has been the most amazing servicing mission to this unique telescope.

It is relatively easy to succeed when everything is going according to plan. This crew was like excellent tea — you don’t know how strong it is until you put it into boiling water! These astronauts overcame every unexpected difficulty, and they succeeded in making Hubble the best it has ever been.

In the movie “The Magnificent Seven,” one of the gunmen expresses his admiration for a shot taken by one of his friends, exclaiming: “Ah, that was the greatest shot I’ve ever seen.”

I strongly believe that Hubble’s greatest shot of the universe is still to come. And it will come because of the work of the magnificent seven.