FUN FACTS

• The nine 75-watt halogen street lights in the gallery meet the International Dark-Sky Association's approval because they illuminate downward only, protecting the night sky from light pollution that limits astronomical observations in densely populated areas.
  
  
• The replica of Tycho Brahe's armillary sphere was displayed at the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle, officially known as the "Century 21 Exposition." John Glenn's "Friendship 7" Mercury spacecraft, now part of the museum's "Milestones of Flight" gallery, was also displayed at the fair.
  
  
• William Herschel died in 1822 but his son John took the 20-foot telescope from England to South Africa in 1833 and used it to complete his father's work of mapping the entire night sky.
  
  
• There is an industrial diamond in one camera of the Prime Focus Spectrograph; a sapphire in another camera of the spectrograph. Both gems are used to flatten the focal plane where the photographic emulsion sits.
  
  
• The cartoons explaining how detectors sense light from the entire known spectrum, displayed in the "Exploring the Universe in the Digital Age," were drawn by Eli Dwek, a theoretical astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
  
  
• The exhibition's backup Hubble Space Telescope (HST) mirror is optically flawless. The mirror flown on the HST differed in shape by less than 1/50th the thickness of a human hair but that was enough to require major repairs by spacewalking astronauts.
  
  
• The Hopkins Utraviolet Telescope (HUT), the Hubble Space Telescope WF/PC ("whiff-pick") camera and the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) on display in "Explore the Universe" actually explored in space. The HUT flew in 1990 and 1995 and operated within the space shuttle's payload bay. The WF/PC was deployed as part of Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 and retrieved during a vital servicing mission in 1993; the FOS was in orbit as part of the Hubble Space Telescope for almost seven years before being removed in 1997.
  
  
• The Chandra X-ray Observatory is named for the late astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (su-bra-MAHN-yahn chan-drah-SAY-kar). Known to the world as Chandra (which means "moon" or "luminous" in Sanskrit), the University of Chicago professor was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for his theoretical studies of the physical processes important to the structure and evolution of stars.
  

Explore the Universe Media Kit:
Explore The Universe Press Release - September 13, 2001
Explore The Universe Curator's Top 12 Artifacts
Explore The Universe Interactive, Graphic and Audiovisual Highlights
Explore The Universe Bios
Explore The Universe Quick Facts
Explore The Universe Fun Facts
Explore The Universe Imagery for Press Use
Online Exhibition: http://airandspace.si.edu/exploretheuniverse

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