John C. Mather Quotes

Hubble is the most important telescope in history after Galileo's first telescope.

We are now able to put our minds in other places in the universe with the use of telescopes. That is very exciting.

We were looking almost one-tenth of the way to the edge of the universe. We're planning to use the facilities we have to make improvements by another factor of 10... a strain sensitivity that is 10 times smaller. This means looking 10 times further out into the universe.

Hubble made my career.

I think probably the discoveries made by Hubble Space Telescope have been very dramatic, very amazing.

The Hubble program has been so fantastically successful. It's more than what anyone expected.

We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.

Until very recently, the heavenly bodies have been investigated only with reference to their position and their laws of motion, and a quarter of a century ago astronomy was little more than celestial topography.

It feels great to discover a planet, just like any discovery in science, except that it has more of the feel of exploration - you can go back and look at it. However, I can never visit.

It's always a combination of physics and poetry that I find inspiring. It's hard to wrap your head around things like the Hubble scope.

A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.

We don't use Hubble to stare at Jupiter unless there's a special event or some special reason.

The Hubble images far surpassed anything taken by any telescope on Earth.

Because Hubble's been up so many years now, it's actually given us a window to things like... how planets' atmospheres actually change, evolve... over time.

The Hubble Telescope can see the farthest galaxies. The Webb Telescope will see the farthest stars.

Scientists normally like to do experiments. You know, they like to mix this with that and see what happens. They like to take this thing and poke it and see how it reacts. In astronomy, we can't do that. The stars, the planets, the galaxies, are so far away that we just look at them, and we have to learn things by looking at them.

Dad was a world-famous astronomer; Mom was the artist who drew the iconic Pioneer plaque.

It bears mentioning that the Milky Way is only one of 150 billion galaxies visible to our telescopes - and each of these will have its own complement of planets.

If I didn't choose art, I would have become an astronomer.

'Animal Kingdom' is a significant comet, and it's cast a tail. It's very hard to see anything post that happening without that.

Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it.

There are a lot of things you can do in space, and space essentially is unlimited resources. We are climbing over ourselves here looking for the next source of energy. The universe has an unlimited source of energy.

Planets are too dim to be detected with existing equipment, far away, except in these very special circumstances where they're seen by their gravitational effect.

This plucky NASA telescope is able to find planets en masse. If you compare planet hunting to prospecting for gold, then Kepler is equivalent to trading in your trusty pan for a diesel-powered sluice box.

I have worn myself thin trying to find out about this comet, and I know very little now in the matter.