Hubble

Annapolis Chorale music director J. Ernest Green closed the group's classical music season last weekend on a triumphant note with two performances of Joseph Haydn's "The Creation." Haydn's 1798 oratorio — scored for soprano, tenor and baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra — tells the story of the six days of creation. During the chorale's performance, it was given a powerful visual dimension through projected Hubble telescope images of Earth. Haydn and Hubble became a harmonious pairing, along with Renaissance masters Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, whose depictions of the creation of man joined hundreds of photos illustrating the infinite variety of human beauty.

"Hubble 3D," a celebration of the orbiting space telescope and the NASA crew that gave it new life last year, provides a glimpse of how star systems looked a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. It reveals the borders of the visible universe. It drinks in the spectacle of celestial bodies born in fiery pillars of clouds. The content is scientific. The imagery gets biblical. In fact, after Baltimore-based astronaut John Grunsfeld witnessed a positive power check on a Hubble camera he'd installed, he said, "Let there be light."

With time running out for the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers in Baltimore and around the world are gearing up for the biggest research project ever mounted on the orbiting observatory. Later this year, astronomers from dozens of institutions will begin gathering images of more than 250,000 of the most distant galaxies in the universe. They will seek answers to some of astronomy's biggest questions - queries that go to the origins of the universe itself. There is a sense of urgency to the effort.

When he applied for the No. 2 job at the Space Telescope Science Institute, John Grunsfeld hit on a way to stand out from other candidates. First, he loaded a cover letter and a resume onto a memory stick. Then he took it with him into space. The astrophysicist, then on his third mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, waited until the space shuttle's robot arm had grabbed the orbiting observatory before he fired off his note. "He actually used the words, 'I am holding Hubble hostage until you read my application,' " the institute's director, Matt Mountain, recalled.

If the late Senator Charles McC. Mathias had been an American corporation, he'd be Microsoft, Google and Intel combined. His influence on Maryland's economy and society has been incalculable. His independence, fidelity to the Constitution, civil rights record and reputation as "the conscience of the Senate" made him unique in the annals of Congress, as many commentators have pointed out since his death on January 24. But few realize the extraordinary influence Senator Mathias continues to exert on the wealth, prosperity and the material well-being of the Free State's 5 million citizens.

John M. Grunsfeld, a former NASA astronaut who logged more than 58 hours on spacewalks during three missions to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, has been named deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Grunsfeld, who holds a doctorate in physics and specializes in X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy and high-energy cosmic ray studies. In a statement, he called his new job "an incredibly exciting opportunity for me to work at a focal point of top astronomers at the leading edge of scientific inquiry."

A California scientist using the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the smallest object ever seen in the Kuiper Belt - the vast region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. The unnamed object is estimated to be 3,200 feet in diameter - just over a half-mile. Hubble detected it from 4.2 billion miles. The next-smallest known Kuiper Belt object is 30 miles in diameter. CalTech astronomer Hilke Schlichting and her team found the tiny object by scouring 4 1/2 years of data from Hubble's Fine Guidance Sensor.

A California scientist using the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the smallest object ever seen in the Kuiper Belt - the vast region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. The unnamed object is estimated to be 3,200 feet in diameter - just over a half-mile. Hubble detected it from 4.2 billion miles. The next-smallest known Kuiper Belt object is 30 miles in diameter. CalTech astronomer Hilke Schlichting and her team found the tiny object by scouring 4 1/2 years of data from Hubble's Fine Guidance Sensor.