Hubble focuses on quasar

WASHINGTON - An instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope focused on a quasar billions of light years away to make the first spectral observations of a faint object by the $1.5 billion orbiting telescope, NASA has announced.

The instrument, a faint object spectrograph, targeted the quasar known as UM675 in a study of the chemical composition of the early universe.

A NASA announcement Monday said that the quasar appears to be receding from the Earth at a speed of about 80 percent of the speed of light.

To make the readings, the space telescope focused on UM675 for 33 minutes in each of three different orbits. A computer at the Goddard Space Center then combined the data to create a single data set.

The readings by the faint object spectrograph were in the far ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Radiation of this type cannot be detected on Earth because the planet's atmosphere blocks it, but it can be detected in space.

Quasars, or "quasi-stellar objects," are puzzling celestial bodies that emit more energy than would be expected from an objects of their size. Astronomers study quasars in several spectra in hopes of understanding their nature.

Hubble has a focusing problem that seriously affects instruments, such as cameras, that work only in the visible portion of the spectrum. The focusing flaw, however, has less effect in the invisible portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.