Why is the Hubble Space Telescope considered to give the best images in the visible?

Question

Why is the Hubble Space Telescope considered to give the best images in the visible when telescopes such as the Keck 10 m telescopes have almost five times larger mirrors?.

Answer 1

there is no distortion due to the earths atmosphere
The Hubble is in orbit so it can see clearly into space. Keck has to deal with the distortion looking through miles of earths atmosphere.
It's kinda like when you are looking at the horizon on a hot summer day over a long road. The wavy lines you see that distort your view are atmosphere. Same thing happens when the Keck tries to look into space.
Hope that helps.

Answer 2

Although it is true that the Hubble does not have to worry about correcting for atmospheric turbulence, Hubble still does not have the light gathering power of traditional ground based telescopes as others have pointed out. Before adaptive optics, your statement about Hubble giving the best images was true, but that is no longer the case. Adaptive optics has allowed our ground based telescopes to surpass the quality of images offered by Hubble. Here is a page showing a comparison of Saturn's moon Titan with a traditional telescope, Hubble, and then Keck with adaptive optics. The difference is clear.

http://cfao.ucolick.org/ao/why.php

The main advantage offered by Hubble now, is that it can look for wavelengths of light that are blocked by our atmosphere. Our atmosphere blocks x-rays, UV, and other spectrum as well that are only possible to be resolved from space. Hubble is only able to resolve visible light, UV, and IR; as opposed to other space based telescopes which can resolve x-rays and such.

Answer 3

The Keck 10 m telescope(s) are 20 times larger than the Hubble 2.2 m telescope, but the atmosphere interferes with their imaging.

Answer 4

As others have said, the Hubble has the advantage of not having to look through the unsteady atmosphere. While large Earth-based telescopes can now get higher resolution using adaptive optics, so far that only works over a very small area. Hubble images have maximum resolution across the entire field, enabling it to capture images like the panoramic mosaic of M51 released in 2005.

Answer 5

Injanier is correct. I've done a bit of work with some of the guys at the U of Arizona (which is almost in my backyard ☺) and it's pretty easy to get images 80% to 90% as good as Hubbles up at Kitt Peak. (and they can get almost 100% as good at Attacama) But the 'bang for the buck' is a totally different story. Look at what it cost to get the Hubble up and running (including the Shuttle mission to fix the optics because some moron forgot to do sphericity correction) and compare it to the cost of a 16² array of fast DSP chips doing a 2-D DFTadaptive update every 50 ms or so. You can upgrade a couple hundred Observatories for what Hubble cost.

Doug

Answer 6

The Hubble can see clearer because there is no earth's atmosphere interference. The James Webb Space telescope will be even better. It's schedule to deploy in 2013. Check it out -> http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/ :)

Answer 7

With out a doubt,there has to be other Intelligent life in the universe.We know that for life to exist there must be water,light and Temperature. How many planets are orbiting suns in the universe? i want to guess and say that there are most likely hundreds of life supporting planets and yes i would imagine that some are far superior to our race.Think about it,we have a whole Society based on greed and ruled by wars.

Answer 8

There is more light in space from distant objects since it isn't attenuated by the earth's atmosphere.

Distortion is a problem too, but with adaptive optics most distortion can be removed on the larger more complex telescopes.

Answer 9

Any telescope in space will be clearer than one on earth

Answer 10

Because there are no atmospheric interferences in space.