Seeing the Universe

In my last post, I mused about corrections to human vision. In it, I wrote about how adaptive optics has provided eye doctors with improvements in the treatment of cataracts and other vision issues. At the time I wrote, I was facing eye surgery myself. And, now, nearly three weeks later, it all seems to have worked! As Hubble Space Telescope gained in 1992, I have gotten a new view of the universe. It’s sharper and more colorful, and I haven’t had eyesight this good since I was a kid.

Expanding our View

Next year marks the 30th anniversary of the launch and deployment of HST. Its problems are long in the past, but in those early days, HST had about the same level of crappy vision as I did just three weeks ago. While my eyes weren’t afflicted with the same problem that the telescope had, I must admit I was getting a personal look at what a bad point-spread function was like. The PSF is basically how an optical system responds when it “sees” a point source of light, such as a star (in astronomy). HST’s PSF was pretty bad; most of the light from sources was spread out into a cloudy halo, which made doing astronomy pretty tough.

Same with my eyes; but instead of installing corrective optics outside of my eye (called “glasses” or “contact lenses”) my eyes couldn’t respond to those exterior fixes anymore. So, we implanted new lenses inside my eye. Like with HST, the new lenses are focusing light properly as it enters my eye, and I get a sharp, clear view of all but the very closest things.

Hubble’s Cosmos

HST has really given us a great gift — one of distance vision and clarity. As a multi-wavelength observatory, it has extended our view of the universe. On these evenings when I walk outside and look at my newly sharp view of the sky from beneath Earth’s atmosphere, I marvel all the more at what HST and its sister observatories have led us to discover in the cosmos.

In a much larger sense, humanity’s view of the universe has always been a little “clouded” by our own atmosphere. The beauty of HST’s 30 years of service is that, once it had corrective optics installed, it began sending back the most exquisite views of the cosmos. They opened our earth-bound eyes to realms we knew were out there. But, we’d never seen them so clearly.

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