Hubble captures deepest look into universe By Tariq Malik and Robert Roy Britt Updated: 2:16 p.m. ET March 09, 2004Astronomers 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. "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. Behind the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 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. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4488527/
If that picture doesn't put things in perspective, nothing will. Thanks for the new wallpaper! It'll replace the previous Hubble Deep Field picture.
Absolutely amazing. There's got to be intelligent life out there somewhere. Maybe they can play PG for the Rockets, right DD?
Wow, my untrained eye sees at least 10 or more picture perfect spiral galaxies, not to mention the hundreds of objects that are galaxies that I can't positively ID, each one with hundreds of billlions of stars, just in this microscopically tiny portion of the sky alone...truly amazing how insignificant we are.
Mork calling Orson, come in Orson............ There has got to be a little life out there somewhere, IMHO.
