The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit on April 24, 1990, and has spent the last three decades increasing our understanding of the cosmos more than we ever imagined. This year, NASA is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the telescope with another launch: a website that will show you a picture of what the Hubble saw on do birthday.
As the telescope explores space every hour of every day, the images it has captured over the years are both fascinating and different. You would see a star browser, a dust storm on Mars, or something else entirely. All you have to do is enter the date and month of your birthday on the site, so the image you receive may not be from the year you were born – and, if you were born before 1990, of course not – but it’s a lot of fun to figure out how you spent that special birthday with how the Hubble spent it. While your parents were carving a bullet at you blowing out the candles at your eighth birthday party, for example, the Hubble might have been capturing a picture of the auroras beautiful around the north pole of Jupiter.
The telescope was first invented all the way back in 1946 by Yale University geologist Lyman Spitzer, Jr., who published a paper on the potential benefits of what it is called. “Large space telescope” in orbit to help astronauts study galaxies. The last project began in the 1970s, and the telescope was designed so that astronauts could periodically refresh while still in orbit. Since it first broke through the atmosphere in 1990, the Hubble – named after astronaut Edwin Hubble, who confirmed the existence of other galleries outside the Milk Trail – has taught us that the universe- though 14 billion years old, that its expansion is accelerating, and much more.
Unlock your birthday image on the Hubble website here, and check out more stellar photos taken by the Hubble here.