ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
GETTY IMAGES
American astronomer Edwin Hubble poses inside the huge Hale Telescope at the Palomar Observatory in southern California. Construction of this 530-ton precision instrument (named after the project’s founder, George Hale) began in 1936, but it wasn’t fully functional until 1949, when Hubble became the first astronomer to use it to take photos of distant galaxies. With its 200-inch mirror, it was the largest effective telescope in the world right up until 1993.