A Tribute to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Dear Hubble,

Congratulations for achieving two decades of operations. Here is a toast to you.

Thank you for being our eye in space these past many years. Because of you our celestial horizons are now wider and more beautiful. Because of you, this young and incorrigible species got to see further into the universe and allow the images to invoke feelings of both belonging and wonderment.

Thank you for having the perseverance to stay up after all these years tethered to our little planet of blue. Thank you for giving the much traveled lightwaves a home and a purpose. Thank you for all the new funky nebulae, the twinkling stars, the bashful planets, the bullying black holes and the flashing quasars. Thank you for populating our universe with billions of faraway objects, both on computer and in our minds.

More importantly, thank you for not turning your lenses earthwards, for the pictures down here are gritty,  not so complementary and a little out of  focus. Needless to say we’re not very photogenic as a whole. However, we promise that when you retire in 2014 your replacement the James Webb Space Telescope will be sent from a better world than it was when you were launched in 1990. So take no head of us down here slogging through conflicts and weathering knocks, for the work you do gives us proof of a more fantastical out of this world, which is neither supernatural nor metaphysical in nature.

Thank you, and this goes out to all the passionate people working so hard to keep you up and alive.  You all do Mr. Edwin proud.

P.S. – You may wish to keep a look out for orbiting teapots, it’s a pretty big deal down here.

Nasa HST site

Wikipedia

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