The Hubble Space Telescope reached a milestone several years sooner than scientists expected when it snapped its 100,000th exposure June 22. Space Telescope Science Institute officials largely attribute the achievement to better management of telescope observing time. In fact, Hubble has been using its time so wisely that it has posted a 55 percent observing efficiency over the past eight weeks, beating pre-launch expectations by 20 percent. This means that we're putting out more interesting scientific results to more astronomers and to the public. We're getting more science each orbit and are able to accept larger programs.
Data processing involves data calibration, evaluation and subsequent archiving.
The data are then sent to specific astronomers who were awarded observing time, and eventually are made available to researchers worldwide in a data archive. This archive presently contains over 2.5 trillion bytes of Hubble science data stored on 375 optical disks. About 2 Gbytes of data are processed and archived daily. More than 25 percent of the exposures were spent probing galaxies and galaxy clusters, and another 25 percent on stars and star clusters. The 24-hour observatory has taken images of about 10,000 objects.