Starlight \Star"light`\ (-l[imac]t`), n. The light given by the stars.
Nor walk by moon, Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet. --Milton.
Starlight \Star"light`\, a. Lighted by the stars, or by the stars only; as, a starlight night.
A starlight evening and a morning fair. --Dryden.
But that proved unnecessary when the door was opened Friday morning, exposing the telescope's finely polished 94.5-inch eye to starlight for the first time.
In 1911, to test the concept that gravity and acceleration are equivalent, Einstein stuck his neck out: He predicted that starlight grazing the sun's surface would be curved by 0.83 seconds of arc by solar gravity.
The result is that the concentrated starlight has a slightly fuzzy look.
The telescope's 10-foot aperture door is to be opened Friday, exposing the finely polished 94.5-inch mirror to starlight. Discovery was following Hubble in case the door does not open properly.
Bush also participated in a demonstration of how starlight is analyzed, touching liquid lithium to a flame to turn the flame red. "It's kind of fun," Bush said.
Einstein's theory predicted that starlight grazing the sun would be bent by the sun's gravity more than Newtonian physics forecast.
Now that it is opened, starlight can strike the lens for the first time and it can go about its business of photographing and analyzing the universe in ways and with sensitivity never before possible.