慶祝哈勃望遠鏡20周年生日

        "Hubble is undoubtedly one of the most recognized and successful scientific projects in history," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

　　美國宇航局科學任務委員會副主席艾德·維勒說：“哈勃太空望遠鏡無疑是史上最受認可、最為成功的科學項目之一。

　　From its unique perch some 570 kilometers (353 miles) above Earth, the telescope is our eye on the cosmos, snapping pictures of more than 30,000 celestial objects, some of them located on the far ends of the universe.

　　哈勃望遠鏡地處地球上空約570公里（353英里）處，被視為人類探測宇宙的“眼睛”。目前，它已拍攝到三萬多個天體的照片，其中一些天體遠在宇宙盡頭。

　　The quality of Hubble images is 10 times clearer than pictures from the most powerful ground-based telescopes, because it is beyond the Earth's atmosphere, which distorts the view of ground telescopes.

　　哈勃望遠鏡所拍攝照片的質(zhì)量比功能最強大的地面望遠鏡所拍攝的照片還要清晰十倍，這是因為它處在地球大氣層以外，而大氣層會使地面望遠鏡拍攝的圖像失真。