Colloquia

The Top Ten Hubble Discoveries: Science Highlights of its First Two Decades

The Hubble Space Telescope, known to its friends as just plain “Hubble”, has invigorated or upended nearly every field of astronomy since its initial myopia was corrected by the astronauts in 1993. We can now look back to sense its broad scientific impact, which is unmatched since Galileo realized the dramatic astronomical applications of the telescope in 1609. The talk illustrates how Hubble’s images and spectra have shaped or constrained human understanding of the planets, stars and their formation and death, the structure of galaxies, and the evolution of the Universe though ten key observations and their interpretation.