Hubble Sees the Universe in a New Light
News story originally written on October 9, 1998
A new instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope can see farther away than
anything before. It's called the NICMOS--the Near Infrared Camera and
Multi-Object Spectrometer.
The NICMOS takes pictures using
infrared light. You may
have seen infrared pictures in the movies. When people put on fancy
glasses that give them "night vision" they are looking at the world in
infrared light. Hubble used to take pictures using
visible light, the kind
that you can see with your eyes. But you can't see as far in these
pictures because the visible light is
red-shifted into
infrared light.
NASA plans to launch a new telescope in 2007 that will be able to take
even better pictures than the NICMOS.
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