Tough day at the office? Things rough at home? I’m here to help. There are no drugs involved, no costly psychotherapy, and you don’t have to say anything mean to your mother. All you have to do, is turn on your computer, go online and head for hubblesite.org, the website of Nasa’s Hubble Telescope. Click on “Gallery” and type in “deep field”: then click on any of the images that come up.They will restore your sense of perspective.

This is the Ultra Deep Field – a million-second long exposure, taken in 2004 of a patch of sky just below Orion. It reveals the first galaxies to emerge from the so-called “dark ages”, just after the big bang when the first stars emerged in the cold universe.

Never mind Doctor Who – this is real time travel. The Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (the size, as it happens, of a police box) captured ancient photons of light that began travelling the Universe before Earth existed.

It’s not just that this is a humbling thought. It’s also that it’s an energising thought. We did this: we human beings built this telescope. Yes, we built a war in Iraq, too, but sometimes it helps to realise that we’re not all bad.

Let’s really blast off in the next 50 years

Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon, salutes the pioneers of space exploration as he looks back on his crucial role in its development and hopes that mankinds best is still in the future

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Doubtless you can tell that I am no astronomer. But I have always been entranced by telescopes. How could anyone not be? It’s impossible to read – as one can in Richard Panek’s elegant book about the instrument, Seeing and Believing – of Galileo’s first look at the Moon through his narrow lead tube with its two discs of curved glass, and not to feel wonder. That was nearly 400 years ago, but as telescopes get bigger and better and are able to do ever more extraordinary things, the sensation does not diminish. Even – I should say especially, in my experience – among astronomers themselves.

Wonderful as the Hubble is, we haven’t done so badly, telescope-wise, in Britain. This year is the 50th anniversary of the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire. The Times was the media partner for the first of three festivals held to celebrate this anniversary, “First Light” back in August. It’s not too late to catch the final event this year, “First Flight” (www.jb.man.ac.uk/news/space50/index.html). The first flight is that of the Sputnik satellite – Jodrell Bank’s 250ft radio dish was the only instrument capable of tracking its carrier rocket. For First Flight, in the evenings of October 5 and 6, the Jodrell Bank dish will be transformed into the largest cinema screen in the world – the images projected on it will be 150ft high, twice as high as an IMAX screen.

Amazing, but not as amazing as what the Lovell telescope – or the Hubble, or even the telescope you might have in your back garden – can really do. Don’t think: I’m not a scientist, this isn’t for me. Think: I live on planet Earth – and I want to see what else is out there.