The hubble has several instruments onboard that are used for making
observations, but the primary device is optical.  

More information is available here: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/

and more specifically here: http://www.stsci.edu/hst/

To try and keep this at least a little on-topic, you can find images taken
by the HST and other sources for use as desktop backgrounds to help
make X pretty at: http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagegallery/

Ok, not really on-topic, but I tried...

Jeff


On Fri, 10 Aug 2001, Andrew Nemchenko wrote:

> The Hubble has nothing to do with it. Because they are not taking pictures of
> the earth. If they were then they would have to be shooting the earth with the
> Laser. Plus the hubble is not an optical telescope as far as I can remember.
> I'll go to the Library and Will try to dig up this video tape, maybe I'll bring
> it to an install fest or something.
> 
> Scott Raun wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Aug 09, 2001 at 04:00:32PM +0100, Andrew Nemchenko wrote:
> > > No this is completly diffent the link you sent explains that they use a
> > > laser to create an artificial dot in the sky and then they measure the
> > > distortion in the atmosphere and use a flexible mirror to compensate for
> > > this distorion, with the compensation the stars apper more clearly. What
> > > I saw was completely different, they basically used a giant green colored
> > > laser to burn a hole in the atmosphere, then for a very shor amount of
> > > time they were able to take pictures through that hole with no
> > > distortion. These  are two different thngs.
> >
> > I'm going to take significant convincing to believe this one - do you
> > have a reference on it?  The period of time that a lightning strike
> > makes a vacuum is going to be roughly analogous to this - your looking
> > at a tenth of a second AT MOST!  And the Hubble can't get a usable
> > image that fast.  I find it very difficult to believe that they get
> > enough light down this little narrow pipe (it can't be more than
> > inches across, and you usually measure professional telescopes in
> > FEET!)
> >
> > --
> > Scott Raun
> > sraun at fireopal.org
> > _______________________________________________
> > tclug-list mailing list
> > tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> > https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
> 
> 
> 
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