THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE

Eight months ago, on Nov 21 - 2013, this project crossed its first milestone achieving 1000 supporters on Edwin Hubble's birthday. What an amazing and better date to achieve 5000, than on the 45th anniversary of the moon landing.

Thank you so much for all your support, it's been an incredible ride.

Let's keep spreading the word!

Very special thanks to Dr. Phil Plait for helping me spread the word about this project to his more than 310K followers on Twitter.

Also known as The Bad Astronomer, Dr. Prait is an American astronomer, skeptic, writer and popular science blogger. Dr. Plait has worked as part of the Hubble Space Telescope team, images and spectra of astronomical objects, as well as engaging in public outreach advocacy for NASA missions. He has written two books, Bad Astronomy and Death from the Skies. He has also appeared in several science documentaries, including Phil Plait's Bad Universe on the Discovery Channel.

Thank you very much Dr. Prait for bringing almost a 1000 votes in a couple of hours with a simple gesture, amazing!

Very special thanks to Dr. Ian O'Neill for igniting twitter with this project.

Dr. O’Neill is the founder and editor of Astroengine.com. A published solar physics doctor and space science producer, editor and writer for Discovery News. Since he completed his PhD in coronal loop dynamics with the Solar System Group (supervised by Dr. Xing Li) at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 2006, he has moved into the field of science communication with a focus on providing his audience with mind-blowing space science, while debunking the growing tide of pseudo-science. He has been very active in confronting the disinformation about the “Mayan doomsday” phenomenon — you can find the majority of his current doomsday articles on Discovery News (but you can also find links to his original Universe Today “No Doomsday in 2012″ articles here).

Thanks to Dr. O'Neill, today on the very 45th anniversary of the moon landing, this project has reached the 5000 supports landmark. What an honor. Thank you very much doctor!!.

This is to extend very special thanks to:

PhD Georgia Bladon, Public Information Officer for ESA/Hubble

PhD Oana Sandu, Community Coordinator at the European Southern Observatory (ESO)

and PhD Lars Lindberg Christensen, Head of the ESO Education and Public Outreach Department

Thanks for their support and their help in promoting this project through the ESA/Hubble Facebook page:

The ESA/Hubble is a non-profit organization oriented to support and provide the latest information about the Hubble Space Telescope, a project of international co-operation between NASA and the European Space Agency. You can find out more about their very interesting work in this website:  http://www.spacetelescope.org/

ESA/Hubble’s education and public outreach office, is integrated with the European Southern Observatory’s education and Public Outreach Department (ESO ePOD), their mission is to excel in science communication and stay a powerhouse in the field especially within the areas of visual science communication, popular science writing and innovative knowledge management.

Please visit the ESA/Hubble site, there are hundreds of amazing articles and pictures of the universe and astronomy in general, and don’t forget to subscribe to Hubble News, it’s free and you’ll receive the most exciting news by email every week. I have!

NASA does not sponsor nor endorse this project. However they posted a small note in their Google+ account on Jun 19-2014 inviting people to support, two days before my birthday. The best gift ever! I was thrilled to see this post because not only it was a once in life time event for me, but it really put this project under the spot light within the astronomical community around the world. THANK YOU very much guys!!

A very special thanks to LEGOArte Brick Show for selecting my project as its LEGO Ideas of the week and making this amazing video: 

Please visit LEGOArte Brick Show's channel in YouTube, it features excellent reviews of official LEGO sets as well as LEGO Ideas projects

A very special thanks to Mr. Charles Day from the American Institute of Physics for featuring this project on Physics Today Magazine facebook page https://www.facebook.com/PhysicsToday

Physics Today is the flagship publication of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), and has been published monthly for more than 65 years. Their goal is to keep their readers informed about science and its place in the world. They do this not only with their authoritative feature articles, news stories, and analyses, but also by providing a lively forum for the exchange of ideas. I strongly recommend all LEGO-Astronomy-Science-Space lovers to subscribe to this amazing publication: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/info/subscribe

Very special thanks to SantaMoss for featuring this project in BrickUltra as the LEGO Ideas of the week, A true honor.

http://brickultra.com/lego-ideas-of-the-week-the-hubble-space-telescope/

If you would like to see these pictures in high resolution, please visit my Hubble Space Telescope Album in my Flickr Account, and please don't forget to let me know your thoughts in the comments section, your opinion is most important to me.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/108643394@N02/sets/72157637649748506/

Hope you all like the eye candy. :)

Since I first posted this project, many people pointed out their disappointment because the set was too big to have mini figures.  So I finally decided to go back to the designing table and figure a frame that would make the telescope small enough to have mini figures around. It was not easy, it took a lot of thinking and redoing but finally I think I got it right. Here I present to you what I believe is a much better and improved version of the original set: THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE.

Since this version is almost 35%-40% smaller than the first one, the parts count dropped considerably, therefore I was able to make the entire cylinder from back to front, which I could not do in the original version because the parts count was already a critical issue. Thanks to the movie “Gravity”, I was able to take a closer look to the actual design of the telescope; therefore you will notice that the level of detail is much higher and accurate.

I hope you all like it and keep voting for it, there’s still a long road ahead and now that the clock is ticking, more than before I need all of your support. So if you like it, remember that supporting is not all you can do to put this beauty on the shelves, spreading the word among friends, coworkers, classmates, relatives and fellow space and LEGO mates, is also a great deal of help as any support counts. However, if you do not like it, please I beg you to take 60 seconds, go to the comment section and let me know what is it what you do not like; I can appreciate and value all critiques and opinions as they are my best source for improvement.

Thank you very much.