Mountain View, California — Believe it or not the Hubble Space Telescope was actually launched 20 years ago…yes 20 years! And as it is customary, Internet giant Google has celebrated the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope with a commemorative “Doodle” on its homepage, which began on April 24, 1990.
Over the years, the Hubble Space has provided some of the most spectacular and famous images of our galaxy and beyond, an impressive age for such an important piece of hardware for modern astronomy. Google is one of the geekiest companies out there, which would not miss out on an occasion like this. Google Doodles — this is what we refer to when Google replaces the logo on it homepage search, more and more doodles are showing up recently.
The search engine’s doodle logo has been altered with an inky black sky with the word “Google” inscribed across it. The Hubble telescope takes the place of the word’s two Os.
Hovering one’s mouse pointer over the image brings up the words “20th Anniversary of Hubble Telescope Launch by NASA”. Clicking on it brings up the Google search page for “Hubble Telescope,” while clicking on “I’m feeling lucky” brings up the Hubble’s own website.
According to an article published on zdnet.com by Christopher Dawson, who imparts some nostalgic moments with us, reports that a new tour of Hubble images is now available on Google Earth to celebrate its twentieth year, with different parts of the tour connecting to specific areas on hubblesite.org.
The Hubble telescope, launched on 24 April 1990, has had a patterned history, requiring major repairs early in its career due to one of its focusing mirrors being incorrectly made. However, since then it has returned some of the most incredible images ever taken of space, including the famous Pillars of Creation image and the Deep Field.
You can browse through every Google logo from 1998 to 2010 at the official google doodle page. The first Google doodle was of the Burning Man Festival of 1998. The doodle was created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, to inform users of their absence in case the servers crashed.