He joined Nasa in 1980 and is a veteran of four space shuttle flights, commanding the mission that launched the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit in 1990.
CCDs convert starlight gathered by the telescope into electrical signals.
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But he told me later that Earth's bright blue light was shining through the Eagle's telescope and into his eyes, keeping him awake.
In a statement, Nasa said the problem had been detected on Tuesday, when the telescope went into a pre-programmed "safe mode" which kicks in "if the observatory has trouble knowing where it should point", Mr Grunsfeld told AFP news agency.
Then Mandel works his magic: Using an ultrasensitive digital camera attached to the back of a telescope and wired into a computer, he starts to pull images down from the heavens.
They delved deep into the telescope's observations, studying how each world's gravity tugs on its sibling planets.
This has been achieved with the aid of a cooling system run on superfluid helium, more than 2, 000 litres of which were loaded into the telescope at launch.
He leaves the telescope at home and stares into the endless night sky with the naked eye.
On Thursday, the telescope's Wide Field Camera was replaced, giving the telescope an even deeper view into space - and thus into the history of the Universe.
The South Pole Telescope could thus see 10 billion years into the past, and might turn up thousands of clusters more than enough to study the evolution of dark energy.
But five people came up with the steamboat, and nine people came up with the telescope, and, if Gray had fallen into the Grand River along with Bell, some Joe Smith somewhere would likely have come up with the telephone instead and Ma Smith would have run the show.
Much like a telescope, the larger the mirror, the further out into the cosmos you can see.
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He would really have appreciated the work that went into making the main mirror on Esa's telescope - itself a technological wonder.
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Space Shuttle Endeavour was staged for a possible rescue mission in case Space Shuttle Atlantis gets into trouble while the crew is fixing the Hubble Telescope.
The biggest, most complex telescope project to date, ALMA will be able to peer into the deeper reaches of space with "unprecedented power", according to astronomer Chris Hadfield.
The liquid acts as an additional lens, narrowing the beam of light just as a telescope turns what looks to the naked eye like a smudge on the horizon into a crisp image.
In visible light, all stars appear as points, only smeared out into a small circle by the atmosphere and by the optics of the telescope.
Coming up on February 10, the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute will show us what it looks like when a supernova that has spewed tons of debris into space sees that debris begin to hit the rings around the dying star.
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