Hubble Space Telescope - People's Choice

In the spirit of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 and presumably to commemorate that magical day in history when Galileo first turned his telescope to the sky, the Hubble Space Telescope is letting the public decide what celestial object it should peer at next.

This is not to say that the public now gets to point Hubble capriciously at whatever strikes its collective fancy. Rather the scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute, who oversee Hubble, have put together a list of six interesting objects that the telescope has never observed. And as you can see there is a good range of objects: galaxies, star forming regions, and planetary nebulae. I personally voted for the edge-on galaxy (NGC 4289) because we don't observe galaxies at that angle very often. And planetary nebulae are so passe, don't you agree?


If you prefer to make your choice based on more than looks alone, there is even a short video describing what we currently know about each object and what a much longer look might tell us about them.

As the infomercials often say, this is a limited offer, quite limited it turns out. You have until Sunday, March 1st to cast your vote. So act now! There nothing like having the power to control a 25,000 lb machine in space.