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The Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope Project

Welcome to the home page of the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT) project at The Johns Hopkins University. HUT was conceived, designed, and built by astronomers and engineers at JHU to perform astronomical observations in the far-ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, wavelengths of light that are inaccessible to ground-based telescopes.

HUT's primary purpose is to observe wavelengths of light that are too short to be seen with the Hubble Space Telescope, although overlap is provided to allow direct comparison. The telescope has flown twice aboard the space shuttle, once in December 1990 and again in March 1995, as part of a package of instruments called the Astro Observatory. HUT has been used to observe hundreds of objects, ranging from nearby stars and planets to the most distant objects known in the Universe, the quasars.

Using the buttons below, you can access a wide range of popular level information about the telescope and its two space shuttle flights. Links to technical information are provided for those who are interested in more detail. We hope you enjoy browsing these pages and learning about HUT.

What is HUT and What Does it Do?
Click here to learn more about the telescope, what it was designed to do, and why. Includes line diagrams and photos as part of your personalized guided tour!

HUT and the Astro Observatory
This section places HUT in the context of the Astro Observatory, describing some of the project's history, and providing links to information about the other instruments in the package. Special pages specific to the Astro-1 and Astro-2 missions are also available.

Scientific Results from HUT
Click here to learn about some of the exciting results achieved with HUT, described at a popular level. Links to more technical descriptions are provided. This section is weighted toward Astro-1 results, but Astro-2 information is being added as it becomes available, so watch this space!

Publications involving HUT
This section contains reference listings for all of the articles published or in press that report findings from HUT. Many of the articles have abstracts on-line and we are working to get the entire papers on line, especially for papers currently being added. Click here to get right to the Astro-2 papers!

The People Who Made it Happen
Use this page to learn about many of the people involved in designing, building, and flying HUT on the space shuttle.

The Photo Gallery
Although photos are linked in elsewhere throughout our pages, we have assembled the best in one place! Check out images of the launches, the astronauts and telescopes on-orbit, and various earth views.

Technical Information About HUT
Project personnel (or interested bystanders) can use this button to get directly to technical information about the telescope and/or data reduction.

HUT Quick Look Spectral Atlas
Many of the spectra obtained with HUT during Astro-1 are on-line. The top page contains links to "example" spectra of various types of objects for the casual user. A separate page will allow you to search the actual observation log and select specific objects of interest. (Data from the Astro-2 mission are still proprietary and will be added at a later date.)

More information on HUT and the Astro missions is available at these sites:

Marshall Space Flight Center

Kennedy Space Center (STS-35, Astro-1)

Kennedy Space Center (STS-67, Astro-2)

The Johns Hopkins University Office of News and Information

Look here for Other Interesting Web Sites

Please send us your Comments, Questions, and/or Suggestions.

Our logo provides a return to the HUT home page.