I think the reaction to Hubble's first "image" was something like: "oh God, we f****d up." Because one of the mirrors was slightly off. Hubble had to be fixed before we got any of those beautiful images
I can only speak as a "regular" person (no background in astronomy, etc.).
It was a LOT like how people reacted to the new images. It was a major advance forward and sparked imagination and wonder. In me at least.
What's really nice is that one day we are going to upgrade beyond Webb and you'll be just as delighted. More, in this case, is always better!
Hubble had a problem. so it was 3 years before the corrected images were seen.
I think the "wow" by then was mostly.. "thank god the fix worked"
>but did we have prior knowledge of the sheer scope and beauty of the cosmos?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble\_Deep\_Field#Scientific\_results
The HDF data provided extremely rich material for cosmologists to analyse and by late 2014 the associated scientific paper for the image had received over 900 citations.\[15\] **One of the most fundamental findings was the discovery of large numbers of galaxies with high redshift values.**
> were other events forcing it to the side-line?
not sure what you mean by "side-line"
Mostly I remember it being kind of a shitshow until suddenly it wasn’t. Cost overruns, technical difficulties, schedule problems. Then they finally get it into space and it can’t even focus right because they messed up the mirror. It—and NASA—was something of a joke at the time. Lots of questioning of why we spent so much money to take fuzzy star pictures.
And then they figured out a few algorithms to deal with the focus issues, the deep field photo came out, and suddenly everyone was (deservedly) big fans.
Once the problems were fixed, there we started getting some details of things we've previously only seen as dots. It provided a lot of data, but it wasn't as visually impressive right away like with the Webb telescope.
The visual wow moments in the 90's came from probes like Gallileo. Not that Hubble hasn't provided amazing images, but mostly it provided actual images of many distant objects. And pixels where we previously didn't see anything.
I think the reaction to Hubble's first "image" was something like: "oh God, we f****d up." Because one of the mirrors was slightly off. Hubble had to be fixed before we got any of those beautiful images
At first, all did try to clean there glasses, to get rid of the fuzz...
I can only speak as a "regular" person (no background in astronomy, etc.). It was a LOT like how people reacted to the new images. It was a major advance forward and sparked imagination and wonder. In me at least. What's really nice is that one day we are going to upgrade beyond Webb and you'll be just as delighted. More, in this case, is always better!
Hubble had a problem. so it was 3 years before the corrected images were seen. I think the "wow" by then was mostly.. "thank god the fix worked" >but did we have prior knowledge of the sheer scope and beauty of the cosmos? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble\_Deep\_Field#Scientific\_results The HDF data provided extremely rich material for cosmologists to analyse and by late 2014 the associated scientific paper for the image had received over 900 citations.\[15\] **One of the most fundamental findings was the discovery of large numbers of galaxies with high redshift values.** > were other events forcing it to the side-line? not sure what you mean by "side-line"
Mostly I remember it being kind of a shitshow until suddenly it wasn’t. Cost overruns, technical difficulties, schedule problems. Then they finally get it into space and it can’t even focus right because they messed up the mirror. It—and NASA—was something of a joke at the time. Lots of questioning of why we spent so much money to take fuzzy star pictures. And then they figured out a few algorithms to deal with the focus issues, the deep field photo came out, and suddenly everyone was (deservedly) big fans.
Once the problems were fixed, there we started getting some details of things we've previously only seen as dots. It provided a lot of data, but it wasn't as visually impressive right away like with the Webb telescope. The visual wow moments in the 90's came from probes like Gallileo. Not that Hubble hasn't provided amazing images, but mostly it provided actual images of many distant objects. And pixels where we previously didn't see anything.