SIGHTINGS


 
NGST - Awesome Space
Telescope 40 Times More
Powerful Than Hubble
From Robert A.M. Stephens
<sti3818@montana.com>
3-2-99

 
Due for STS launch and orbital insertion in 2003, the NGST - Next Generation Space Telescope - will be an incredible 40 times more powerful than the current Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Too, it will see in temperature mode countless objects that have never been observed before. NGST will also 'see' into the cosmos, and therefore 'time,' in values never imagined.
 
 
 
 
 
 
NGST will be the Rosetta Stone for discovering and seeing what objects lay out in the super cold regions of our sun's influence and sphere of gravitational hold - areas roughly 20+ billion miles from Sol itself. There have been hints that large objects are out there the size of Jupiter, and possible greater, but it has been impossible to image these unknowns since they emit no light. However, their apparent and real temperatures will allow for registration with NGST. From that point, NGST will be able to form digital images from the signatures of these distant and suspected objects.
 
The peculair gravitational fluxes observed in all orbital bodies that swing around our sun have been theoretically attributed to these large, unknown trans-solar objects, but this has never been conclusively defined. NGST will render this mystery moot.
 
Current HST capability can resolve objects 400 miles in diamter on planet Pluto and its linked moon Charon, the warmest moon in our solar system. NGST will resolve objects on Pluto down to 19 miles. To make a comparison closer to home: NGST, if it were possible, would be able to image birds flying around the World Trade Center from Hawaii.
 
NGST will also look 'back in time' with arrays never before available for picking out the faintest of objects at the very end of known distances from us. It is assumed NGST will allow us as a species to see back 25 billion years or more, basically to the beginning of time...to the very edge of the universe as it is known.
 
It is the boldest step yet for man to try to see where we have come from, and possibly by conditions found in our own galaxy and others nearby, to learn where we are heading.
 
NGST is tentatively scheduled for high Earth Orbital insertion via STS in late 2003.





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