DesertFox
03-09-2004, 09:36 PM
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) unveiled the deepest look into the universe yet, a portrait of what could be the most distant galaxies ever seen.
The new image, called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), includes objects that until now have been too faint to be seen and includes ancient galaxies that emerged just 700 million years after the Big Bang from what astronomers call the "dark ages" of the universe.
http://www.space.com/images/v_ultra-deep_field_02.jpg
<font size=1>Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute today unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the million-second-long exposure reveals the first galaxies to emerge from the so-called "dark ages," the time shortly after the big bang when the first stars reheated the cold, dark universe. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team</font>
http://www.space.com/images/h_udf_details_02.jpg
<font size=1>Almost every panel shows odd-shaped galaxies engaged in boxing matches with galactic neighbors. In the panel at top, left, three galaxies just below center are enmeshed in battle, their shapes distorted by the brutal encounter. The panel at top, center, reveals an edge-on spiral galaxy fending off a weirdly shaped blue galaxy. The bottom, right panel is littered with encounters between galaxies that have been shredded by the interactions. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team</font>
"This image is the deepest view in the visible that we've ever taken, where an object about as bright as a firefly on the Moon would be visible," said Massimo Stiavelli, of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore and the UHDF project leader.
Stiavelli said the new image is six times more sensitive than previous deep sky surveys and four times better than even Hubble's last faraway looks, the Hubble Deep Fields (HDFs), taken in 1995 and 1998.
"It has these extra colors with extra red shifts, which leads you to the end of the dark ages, something you couldn't do with the HDF," he added.
The HUDF field contains an estimated 10,000 galaxies in a patch of sky in the constellation Fornax, a region just below the constellation Orion, that appears in an area of the sky that appears largely empty if observed by ground-based instruments. The image is about one-tenth the diameter of the full moon and took Hubble one million seconds to take. To cover the entire sky with such detail would take the HST one million years, astronomers said. ...
Hubble's ACS picture required a series of exposures taken over the course of 400 HST orbits around Earth from Sept. 24, 2003, to Jan. 16, 2004. About the size of a phone booth, ACS captured ancient photons of light that began traversing the universe even before Earth existed. Photons of light from the very faintest objects arrived at a trickle of one photon per minute, as opposed to millions of photons per minute from nearer galaxies.
http://www.space.com/images/h_udf_history_02.jpg
More (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/hubble_ultradeep_040309.html)
The new image, called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), includes objects that until now have been too faint to be seen and includes ancient galaxies that emerged just 700 million years after the Big Bang from what astronomers call the "dark ages" of the universe.
http://www.space.com/images/v_ultra-deep_field_02.jpg
<font size=1>Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute today unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the million-second-long exposure reveals the first galaxies to emerge from the so-called "dark ages," the time shortly after the big bang when the first stars reheated the cold, dark universe. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team</font>
http://www.space.com/images/h_udf_details_02.jpg
<font size=1>Almost every panel shows odd-shaped galaxies engaged in boxing matches with galactic neighbors. In the panel at top, left, three galaxies just below center are enmeshed in battle, their shapes distorted by the brutal encounter. The panel at top, center, reveals an edge-on spiral galaxy fending off a weirdly shaped blue galaxy. The bottom, right panel is littered with encounters between galaxies that have been shredded by the interactions. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team</font>
"This image is the deepest view in the visible that we've ever taken, where an object about as bright as a firefly on the Moon would be visible," said Massimo Stiavelli, of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore and the UHDF project leader.
Stiavelli said the new image is six times more sensitive than previous deep sky surveys and four times better than even Hubble's last faraway looks, the Hubble Deep Fields (HDFs), taken in 1995 and 1998.
"It has these extra colors with extra red shifts, which leads you to the end of the dark ages, something you couldn't do with the HDF," he added.
The HUDF field contains an estimated 10,000 galaxies in a patch of sky in the constellation Fornax, a region just below the constellation Orion, that appears in an area of the sky that appears largely empty if observed by ground-based instruments. The image is about one-tenth the diameter of the full moon and took Hubble one million seconds to take. To cover the entire sky with such detail would take the HST one million years, astronomers said. ...
Hubble's ACS picture required a series of exposures taken over the course of 400 HST orbits around Earth from Sept. 24, 2003, to Jan. 16, 2004. About the size of a phone booth, ACS captured ancient photons of light that began traversing the universe even before Earth existed. Photons of light from the very faintest objects arrived at a trickle of one photon per minute, as opposed to millions of photons per minute from nearer galaxies.
http://www.space.com/images/h_udf_history_02.jpg
More (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/hubble_ultradeep_040309.html)