10,000 Galaxies Shot May Be The Hubble Telescope's Most Spectacular Photo Ever

[Buster's Uncle]

This Amazing Shot Of 10,000 Galaxies May Be The Hubble Telescope's Most Spectacular Photo Ever
The Huffington Post
By David Freeman | Posted:  06/03/2014 6:09 pm EDT    Updated:  06/03/2014 6:59 pm EDT   


NASA calls it the most colorful image ever captured by the Hubble Space Telescope--and the most comprehensive. It has to be one of the most spectacular.

But the image--the remarkable payoff of a new survey called the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field--is more than merely beautiful. It may also help fill in some gaps in our understanding of how stars form.

(Story continues below image.)

The new Hubble image shows about 10,000 galaxies. It's the result of the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field project.


Previous versions of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field captured wavelengths of light from visible and near-infrared as well as the far-ultraviolet (UV), Alan Boyle wrote on the NBC News website. But near-ultraviolet light wasn't covered nearly as well.

When you add the UV light, you get quite a view.

And what a view it is! The new image, a false-color compilation of shots taken during the course of 841 orbits of Hubble between 2003 and 2012, contains roughly 10,000 galaxies in a vast variety of shapes and sizes.

"The galaxies show every possible shape and size, astronomer Phil Plait wrote on Slate. "Many are distorted, victims of collisions with other galaxies, their mutual gravity pulling them into weird shapes like taffy quadrillions of kilometers across. Many are very blue, showing active star formation, while others are exceedingly red, probably galaxies much farther away, their light taking far longer to reach us. Note that most of the very red galaxies are smaller dots, another indication of their tremendous distance."

Named after astronomer Edwin Hubble, the Hubble Space Telescope is a venture of NASA and the European Space Agency. It was launched in 1990 and has been wowing us ever since.

Zoom and pan of Hubble's colourful view of the Universe

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/03/hubble-space-telescope-ultraviolet-10000-galaxies-photo_n_5440225.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

[Buster's Uncle]

Colorful Hubble Telescope Image Is Best-Ever View of Universe's Evolution (Video)
SPACE.com
by Miriam Kramer, Staff Writer  20 hours ago



This image by the Hubble Space Telescope is the most comprehensive view yet of the universe's evolution as seen by a space telescope. The coloful image, released June 3, 2014, contains 10,000 galaxies



BOSTON — The Hubble Space Telescope has captured an amazing and colorful deep view of the universe, showing galaxies shining in ultraviolet light during their wild, star-forming "teenage" years.

The new image, which was released today (June 3), is the most comprehensive view of the evolving universe ever captured by the space telescope, Hubble representatives said. Hubble previously imaged the same patch of sky shown in the new image between 2004 and 2009 to create a super-detailed view known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

The new Hubble telescope picture — a composite of exposures taken from 2003 to 2012 — is called the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and contains about 10,000 galaxies, with the ultraviolet (UV) images rendered in blue. The image also extends very far back in time, capturing a snapshot of galaxies just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

"The reason we want to do this is to study galaxies in what you might call their 'teenage years,' while they're still growing up," Harry Teplitz, the project's principal investigator and a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, told reporters here today at the 224th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

"What we did that's new is that we took ultraviolet images, and the reason we want to study things in the ultraviolet is that it tells us about the youngest, most massive, hottest stars that are forming within galaxies," Teplitz added.

The new ultraviolet images could also help fill in a gap in scientists' knowledge about galaxies. In the past, Hubble has imaged distant, primitive galaxies that came into existence not long after the Big Bang using near-infrared capabilities, and scientists have been able to study nearby galaxies that have already "grown up."

But the period of galactic evolution between those two phases has remained mysterious. The new ultraviolet data could help clear up some of the mystery, Teplitz said.

"In between 5 [billion] and 10 billion years ago, when UV light was emitted, we've not had the facility to explore that range in the ultraviolet — so that's why we wanted to fill in the gap," he said. "To understand why that's important, it's sort of like having studied people or families by first studying infants, and then studying grown-ups after they've gone to college, but completely missing everything in between and not knowing about school."

By adding ultraviolet observations to the original Hubble image, scientists can now see star formation in galaxies as they are growing during their most productive years. Therefore, astronomers can potentially learn more about how galaxies grow and turn into what is seen today.

Once Hubble goes offline sometime within the next decade, astronomers will not have a way to obtain ultraviolet data that can be used to probe the universe in this way, Hubble representatives said.

Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, will get great looks at the universe in infrared light; however, it will not be able to obtain the ultraviolet data that Hubble collects. Scientists are therefore using Hubble to get more ultraviolet data in preparation for its successor.


http://news.yahoo.com/colorful-hubble-telescope-image-best-ever-view-universes-223415619.html

[Buster's Uncle]

NASA Reveals Unprecedented Image of Deep Space
The Atlantic Wire
By Danielle Wiener-Bronner  18 hours ago


NASA revealed today one of the most colorful and comprehensive composite shots of deep space, a work that draws on nine year's worth of shots taken by the Hubble Telescope. According to researcher Rogier Windhorst, " It's the deepest panchromatic image of the sky ever made. It reaches the faintness of one firefly as seen from the distance of the moon."

The image shows about 10,000 galaxies that date back to within a few hundred million years of the big bang; a very, very long time ago. Scientists used ultraviolet light to show the full range of colors that can be captured by Hubble. In addition to creating a rather stunning photograph, the image reveals some key information about space.

NASA explains that earlier missions focused only on star formation in relatively near and relatively far galaxies, but didn't gather much information from the middle ground, which would provide information on how stars were made between 5 billion and 10 billion years ago. This is when most stars in the universe came into existence. But the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field study, which put the image together, is filling in that missing link:

Ultraviolet light comes from the hottest, largest and youngest stars. By observing at these wavelengths, researchers get a direct look at which galaxies are forming stars and where the stars are forming within those galaxies. Studying the ultraviolet images of galaxies in this intermediate time period enables astronomers to understand how galaxies grew in size by forming small collections of very hot stars. Because Earth's atmosphere filters most ultraviolet light, this work can only be accomplished with a space-based telescope.

Researcher Harry Teplitz explained, "the lack of information from ultraviolet light made studying galaxies in the HUDF like trying to understand the history of families without knowing about the grade-school children... The addition of the ultraviolet fills in this missing range."

The new data is especially important to have ahead of the launch of the James Webb telescope, which will eventually replace Hubble (or become its successor, as NASA prefers to think about it.)

This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/06/nasa-composite-photo-uv/372106/


http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-reveals-unprecedented-image-deep-space-010800386.html