Brighton Astronomy Group Blog

I made it to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) COSTAR package Saturday. The COSTAR is located near the T-rex Café. The package is protected by a Plexiglas covering It is about the size of a grand piano. COSTAR stands for Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement. This is the instrument that resolved the issue with flawed mirror problem that prevented Hubble from a clear focus. It needed eyeglasses and COSTAR was it. It was built by Ball Aerospace Corp. and installed in 1993. Since then other service missions have replace the old packages with their own corrective optics. COSTAR was removed from HST in 2009 during the fifth servicing mission and replaced by the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.

Check out the photos in our gallery under telescopes at our website.

While I was there I also got to see the new upgraded IMAX. It is now digital and in 3-D. This was the first 3-D movie I seen in years. Wow how the technology has changed. I watched the HUBBLE 3-D movie wow between the sound system and the 3-D views it was amazing, I would recommend seeing it if you haven’t yet, it is definitely worth it.