A new image from Hubble gives us an in-depth picture of the universe. In the image we see the cumulative exposure of one point in the sky for a million seconds over four months.
Avi Blizovsky
Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Center released the deepest view of the universe on Tuesday, a very long exposure that researchers were able to capture, revealing the universe as it appeared just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
Senior officials at the center said that the image taken by Hubble contains about ten thousand galaxies, and astronomers from all over the world will study this field of view to locate the most distant objects in it.
Stephen Beckwith, director of the institute, said long exposures by the Hubble telescope have collected light out into space for more than 13 billion years and began its journey when the universe was barely 5 percent of its current age, estimated at 13.7 billion years.
"For the first time, we're looking at stars that formed from the material that was dispersed in the Big Bang," Buckwith said. "We see the youngest stars within the hailstones of the early universe."
The images were collected by focusing all the instruments on board the Hubble to a single point in the sky for one million seconds, an exposure that took over 400 revolutions of the space telescope.
Buckwith said that detecting faint objects at long exposures using Hubble's very deep field is like trying to pick up light from a single firefly floating above the moon. The images were gradually collected over four months starting last September. The part of the sky photographed by Hubble was very small and astronomers compare it to looking at the sky through an 8 meter long drinking straw.
The researchers will now look for the most distant objects in the images and also study the ten thousand galaxies, some of which have strange and unusual shapes.
According to the Big Bang theory, the universe began with a huge explosion and then cooled and became dark, without stars and galaxies. 300 million years after the Big Bang, stars and galaxies began to form and this was the oldest observable event. To dig further into that 300-million-year time period, a larger telescope is needed, such as the James Webb Telescope, which is due to be launched in 2011 and is expected to penetrate the dark period of the early days.
The researchers at the institute say that a quick look at these images show a wide variety of galaxies of different sizes, shapes and colors. Many of them appear to be still in the process of interacting with their own gravity as they pull and tear each other apart and form strange shapes.
The astronomers say that at the time these galaxies were photographed, the universe was much smaller and the galaxies were much closer together, thus causing chaotic collisions and changes in the structure of the galaxies.
Researchers rush to interpret a picture of the ancient universe.
Helen Pearson, Nature (translation: Dikla Oren)
Astronomers received the most in-depth picture of the universe from the Hubble Space Telescope. Now the race to decipher the image begins.
The "Ultra Deep Field" image from the Hubble reveals some of the most distant and youngest galaxies ever seen. Until this photo the light coming from them was too weak to be detected. The picture includes objects from Mars about five hundred million years after the big bang; It is estimated that the age of the universe is about 13-14 billion years.
To produce the image, Hubble focused on a point in the sky in the constellation Fornax (Furnace), which is below Orion, in the time period between September 2003 and January 2004. The information collected was published, to the delight of eager scientists, on Tuesday, March XNUMX.
Scientists say that the image surpasses previous Hubble attempts - it took two "Ultra Deep Field" images, one in 1995 and the other in 1998. The current image was taken over 410 orbits of the Earth, several hundred more than previous images.
Also the last picture is bigger and has a better resolution. It was photographed with the help of a new highly sensitive camera, called the Advanced Camera for Surveys, and with the help of images from a near-infrared camera and a multi-object spectrometer.
"This may be the best picture of the sky in the entire decade," says astrophysicist Arlene Crotts of Columbia University in New York.
The release of the information sent many scientists to their computers trying to scan the image for information. At the American Museum of Natural History in New York, three groups of physicists started a friendly battle. The winner will be the first to write or publish an article based on the photo.
The 9 researchers at the museum hope to answer a variety of questions regarding the universe today and in the past. A group led by Kenneth Lanzetta of Stony Brook University in New York is working on understanding the birth and evolution of galaxies by looking at the samples of young galaxies in the image.
Two other teams take advantage of the fact that the photo was taken over a long period of several months and not in a single exposure. They look at the stars and galaxies that have changed places or undergone changes themselves by comparing several images.
Crotts and his colleagues use software that looks for flickering in distant light sources. The flickers may reveal the existence of dim stars, close to our galaxy. Also, Crotts says, it may be possible to discover information about the missing mass in the universe in this way.
Meanwhile, the museum's curator of astrophysics, Michael Sara, and his colleagues hope to discover icy bodies in the Kuiper belt, a ring of objects located at the edges of the solar system around Pluto.
All three teams face competition from many scientists in the world. "I don't know if anyone has ever been stupid enough to hold a contest like this," says Sarah.
The organizers of the competition hope that the public experiment will take away some of the mystery that surrounds the scientific process. Many times the process is conducted behind closed doors, and it includes mistakes, debates and corrections. "We will continue to work until we collapse from exhaustion or until Sunday evening comes, whichever comes first," says Sarah.
The "Ultra Deep Field" image was taken after scientists who run the Space Telescope Science Institute decided that the Hubble would spend a significant portion of its time on the image. For the most part, the Hubble Space Telescope carries out projects for groups of researchers, who receive exclusive access to information.
Scientists say they don't think a better picture will be taken until the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble's successor, is launched in 2011. The Hubble's time is precious, and it is facing imminent retirement, now NASA is canceling shuttle flights to it in order to upgrade and repair it.
