Story by Cole Knutson
Spirals of golden dust and sparkles cover the wall next to a purple patch of gas that blends into a mixture of milky stars. These are just a couple of the things visitors will witness when stepping inside the Hubble Space Telescope exhibition at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon.
To Elizabeth White, Exhibitions Designer at the museum, they almost look like paintings.
“At first glance, without knowing the underlying science, the images on their own are just spectacular,” says White. “Once you look a little deeper into the exhibit, the visitor learns some of the science behind the images.”
The exhibit entitled “Out in Space, Back in Time: Images from the Hubble Space Telescope” displays a series images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that illuminate the cosmos for human eyes. It is a unique opportunity for students to look at some of the most accurate and stunning images of objects throughout the cosmos.
“A visitor could walk in without knowing anything about astronomy and be able to appreciate the beauty of the imagery,” White says. “A student could walk in and learn something new about space. Professors have been able to use the exhibit to teach astronomy.”
One of the more impressive images on display at the exhibit is one of the Hubble Deep Field images. A composite of hundreds of individual photographs taken by the Hubble space telescope, the image gives viewers a glimpse into the vastness of space.
“The image shows a million-second long exposure of a part of the sky that is only 1/10th of the size of the full moon, so just a tiny part of the night sky,” White says, explaining the significance of the image. “But the image shows over 10,000 galaxies. And each of those galaxies are full of stars, [nebulae] and planets!”
Hubble puts into perspective the vastness of the Universe. Our own barred-spiral galaxy, the Milky Way, is a meager 100,000 light years in diameter and 1,000 light years thick. It is in a group with two other galaxies among the billions of others throughout the cosmos. On that scale, Earth is almost as minor of a rock as can be.
The “Back in Time” concept of the exhibit refers to the amount of light years it takes for light from distant stars, galaxies, and nebulae to reach Hubble so that photos may be snapped. Some objects of the universe, such as the Carina Nebula, are thousands of light years away. Therefore, when looking at Hubble’s display of the Carina Nebula, what’s actually being seen is light from thousands of years in the past.
The exhibit also contains interactive features so that the audience can engage themselves and learn the inner-workings of Hubble. Viewers learn about the capture of infra-red light that is not visible through the human eye. The capture of infra-red light helps Hubble see heat and light emitted from objects in space that would otherwise go unnoticed.
“[It] shows how art and science are often connected,” says White, referring to the telescope’s capturing of the infra-red spectrum and its translation into the spectacular photographs on display. “The museum has really made an effort to produce exhibits that are not only interesting and attractive, but provide visitors with multiple ways of interacting with the information.”
Viewers can also mix colored lights together on a white board to understand how Hubble uses artificial colors in some of their photos to illustrate the radiation and temperature of objects such as the Helix Nebula and our solar system’s own Saturn.
There is something for geology buffs at the exhibit as well. There are samples of meteorites to display alongside the stunning photographs. Viewers have the opportunity to look at real space rocks from our own solar system. Among the iron-riddled chunks is the famous Willamette meteorite which was found in 1902 near West Linn, Oregon.
Viewers who are interested in optics may have their interests satisfied at the exhibit as well. At one station there are multiple types of glasses that mimic different lenses usable in telescopes. The audience has the opportunity to try them on and test their vision from across the room on a board of letters much like a testing card at the eye doctor’s office. The different pairs of glasses represent the different lenses of Hubble. It is an opportunity to view things from the perspective of the telescope.
There was a time when the Earth was considered the center of the universe. After some time, Sol – our sun – was given that title. Once that was disproved, it seemed apparent that the Milky Way was what all things revolved around. In 2013, scientists believe that we are part of one universe that contains no center. Hubble has given us insight into that Universe, and it continues to take us deeper and deeper into it with remarkable photographs and discoveries.
“It is part of what we really wanted to get across in the exhibit: that space is vast, and we are only a very small part of it,” White says.