Hubble

[xoxoxoBruce]

I heard when they were changing the camera one of the bolts was frozen. Gave them a WTF moment until they went and got the big wrench to finally break it free.

[glatt]

There was a good article in the Post this morning about it. They were using a kind of torque wrench that was set up to not exert too much force on the bolts so they wouldn't get sheared off. The bolt wasn't budging at that torque setting. So they somehow adjusted it to get rid of the torque setting and applied more force to the bolt with the same wrench, finally getting it out without stripping it. Apparently the bolt was so deep in the camera housing that you couldn't see it. They had a long extended bit that could reach way back in there and engage the bolt. If they hadn't been able to get that bolt out, the entire mission would pretty much be for nothing. Half a billion dollars down the drain.

Article here.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Beestie

Hey, you're a smart guy so maybe you can answer this question. I read where the Hubble captured a pic of an object 13B light years away so they figure its almost as old as the universe itself.

So if it took 13B years for the light to reach earth, doesn't that mean it was in that location 13B years ago? That would seem to be impossible since, it would not be possible for any two objects to be 13B light years apart 13B years ago.

I can't figure that one out.

There's been some thirteen gigayears of expansion of the spacetime, too. And frankly, anything that ancient is expected to look subtly weird somehow, too. Analysis of spectral features is probably going to lead to a number of "hmm, that's really fucking odd" moments.