The IEEE Orange County Computer Society
Presents

Science with the Hubble Space Telescope:
What We Hoped For and What We Got

As early as 1923, Hermann Obserth noted that astronomy from above the earth's atmosphere would have significant advantages, and the use of captured V-2 rockets in 1947-49 to discover ultraviolet and X-ray emission from the sun made clear that it would be possible. By the time the first successful orbiting observatory was launched (OAO-2 in 1968) a small subset of astronomers, led by Lyman Spitzer of Princeton were thinking about the potential uses and making a public case for a "Large Space Telescope" (meaning about 3-m diameter). Panel reports, planning documents, and announcements of opportunity from the 1970's make clear that such a telescope had a much higher priority among space scientists than among astronomers, but also lay out a long list of important results that could be expected. Curiously, the lists of goals for telescopes to operate in the second decade of the present century (JWST, LSMT) sound rather similar. The talk will explore (a) what some of these goals were, (b) the extent to which they have been achieved, (c) a somewhat-prejudiced list of the most important discoveries in astronomy from the past decade, and (d) the extent to which HST contributed to these. Its impact on astronomy as a whole can to a certain extent be quantified.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Virginia Trimble is a native Californian and graduate of Hollywood High School, UCLA (BA physics & astronomy 1964) and Caltech (MS, PhD 1968). For 30 years she oscillated at 31.7 nHz between the University of Maryland (where her late husband, Joseph Weber, was tenured) and the University of California Irvine (where she is tenured). Her current interests include the structure and evolution of stars, galaxies, and the universe, and of the communities of scientists who study them. Although she is now based permanently on the stable soil of Orange County, somehow a great deal of airport time seems to be dictated by an assortment of tasks of very little power but considerable temporal absorptive capacity. These include being chair of the Commission on Astrophysics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, the president of the Division of Union-Wide Activities of the International Astronomical Union, and run-up to chairing the Forum on History of Physics of the American Physical Society. Like the heroine of the cookies-at-tea story, when her publication list passed the 500 mark she stopped counting.

Dr Trimble joined the UCI faculty in 1971, after a year's teaching at Smith College and two postdoctoral fellowship years at Cambridge University (M.A. 1969). She received the 1986 National Academy of Sciences Award for scientific reviewing and has served as Vice President of the International Astronomical Union; Vice President of the American Astronomical Society and Chair of its Historical Astronomy Division; and Member of the Executive Board of the American Physical Society and Chair-elect of its Division of Astrophysics.

A few books by Dr Virginia Trimble: Visit to a Small Universe; After the First Three Minutes; Clusters, Lensing, and the Future of the Universe; Stellar Interiors; Historical Development of Modern Cosmology; The origin and abundances of the chemical elements .

Virginia is an entertaining speaker with a delightful sense of humor.

Virginia Trimble, PhD
Dept of Astronomy and Physics
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA
vtrimble (at) uci.edu
(949) 824-6948