“Would someone please help me out here? I’m just a poor ignorant sodbuster. How do they “see” ANYTHING with a radio telescope? In living color, yet?!”
Light and radio energy are two different kinds of electromagnetic energy, and the can both be used to create an image. See the explanation at:
Try It At Home! Make a Radio Image!
http://www.gb.nrao.edu/epo/image.html
“And if all this can be “seen” by that method, why did we have to mortgage the farm to put the Hubble telescope up there?”
Each instrument records images and other data by using different parts of the spectrum of electromagnetic energy. What can be seen and recorded with one segment of the electromagnetic spectrum is different than what can be seen and recorded with another segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. Putting these different images and sets of data together like a giant jigsaw puzzle makes it possible to reveal the secrets of the cosmos which heretofore remained hidden when using only the spectrum of visible light.
/johnny