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New Hubble Ultra Deep Field In Infrared

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the look-into-my-eyes dept.

Hynee writes "Just in time for Christmas, HubbleSite has released a Hubble Ultra Deep Field redux. The original was in visible light; this version, five years on, is in infrared (1.05, 1.25 and 1.6 um). The observation is in support of the upcoming JWST, which will observe exclusively in infrared, but the newly installed WFC3 does seem to provide some extra resolution over the 2004 visible observations with WFC2."

21 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Way to make me feel tiny Hubble by jandrese · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That picture represents a tiny tiny 11 arc-minute square of the sky (according to Wikipedia, it's like looking through a 1mm x 1mm square hole from 1m away) and it is absolutely jam packed with galaxies, each one containing millions of stars.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
    1. Re:Way to make me feel tiny Hubble by ThorofAsgard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If only Carl Sagan were alive to see these new images.

    2. Re:Way to make me feel tiny Hubble by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      To put that into an easier perspective to visualize for people too lazy to check wikipedia before doing the calculations themselves, the width of the image is about 1/10th to 1/8th the diameter of the Moon seen from Earth (depending on when and where you are).

      (Heh, captcha was "abstruse".)

    3. Re:Way to make me feel tiny Hubble by Fulseman · · Score: 5, Funny

      Your girlfriends name is Hubble too? What are the odds.

    4. Re:Way to make me feel tiny Hubble by Brad1138 · · Score: 3, Funny

      It is so nice God took the time to make these Galaxies so we could have light at night. A couple more moons probably would have been easier though.

      --
      If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
    5. Re:Way to make me feel tiny Hubble by Cunk · · Score: 3, Informative

      The new image is 2.4 arc-minutes wide according to hubblesite.org

      --

      I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
  2. Need Bigger Hubble! by Favonius+Cornelius · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Hubble has a tiny mirror. Imagine what we could see if it was 10m or 20m. We can do it easily! Well ok maybe not easy, but we should do it, no matter the cost.

    --
    "Men willingly believe what they wish." - Julius Caesar
    1. Re:Need Bigger Hubble! by taricorp · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm with you that we need bigger space-based telescopes, but I don't think building more in orbit is the best solution. Given the raw material possibilities presented by lunar regolith, I could see the energy cost of moving some materials to the far side of the moon being well offset by the lower amount of materials that must be shunted up there by rocket. We may not have the requisite technologies to set up a lunar optical observatory right now, but I'm confident the technologies could be developed fairly quickly, given a concerted effort.

    2. Re:Need Bigger Hubble! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well the 42m mirror E-ELT is coming up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Extremely_Large_Telescope
      Too bad they cancelled the 100m OWL, it would have kicked ass http://www.gemini.edu/science/maxat/future/future.html
      Besides, it had a much catchier name.

    3. Re:Need Bigger Hubble! by BJ_Covert_Action · · Score: 2, Informative

      I graduated Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in aerospace engineering. Every year, the senior level Bachelor's students participate in a year long spacecraft design mission. Approximately 30 - 40 students team up to fulfill some mission requirements thought up by a few of the professors. I wasn't able to attend the final design review last year, but I know for a fact that the project they worked on involved setting up a telescope array on the dark side of the moon. I have no doubt that their design probably had some holes in it and definitely failed to account for some things because, well, all student designs do. However, I also know for a fact that those 30 some odd students had to develop a design and implementation (launch, orbital trajectories, power solutions, thermal balancing issues, communications systems, the whole shebang if you will) that was practical and possible. In other words, if they relied on unobtainium, they would not have passed.

      The moral of the story is that if a handful of Bachelor's students can come up with a practical design concept in 9 months, there really is no reason that NASA, JPL, or, hell, even some commercial agency, couldn't set up a full telescope array on the dark side of the moon given proper funding and motivation. Then again, that's the kicker. Grades are great motivation for students. In the real world, someone has to fork over dollars, and people don't like doing that for science anymore....

      --
      Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
  3. That is FUCKING AMAZING. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That is truly amazing. I've been out of the field for about a decade now since retiring, but when I got my PhD in Astronomy in the 1960s, we never expected to have such fantastic photography of the celestial bodies. This is truly a tremendous accomplishment by all involved.

    1. Re:That is FUCKING AMAZING. by amn108 · · Score: 4, Informative

      How old does that make you? :-)

      In any case, it is perhaps thanks to people like you that the field has advanced to such a degree when we can enjoy such mindbogglingly marvelous photos of the Universe.

  4. Re:fake by jimbobborg · · Score: 2, Informative

    From the article:

    "Infrared light is invisible and therefore does not have colors that can be perceived by the human eye. The colors in the image are assigned comparatively short, medium, and long, near-infrared wavelengths (blue, 1.05 microns; green, 1.25 microns; red, 1.6 microns). The representation is "natural" in that blue objects look blue and red objects look red. The faintest objects are about one-billionth as bright as can be seen with the naked eye."

  5. Am I the only one... by Fez · · Score: 2, Funny

    Am I the only one that misread that as "Deep Fried" and expected a completely different kind of story?

  6. Ahem... by kipsate · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Perhaps a stupid question, but is 500 million years enough time for all of these spiral galaxies to form?

    --
    My karma ran over your dogma
    1. Re:Ahem... by ei4anb · · Score: 4, Interesting

      not a stupid question at all, it's not enough time for some theories of galaxy formation, given the lack of lumps visible in the cosmic background radiation. However only the furthest galaxies in the view in that image are of that age. There has beem much speculation on the role of supermassive black holes in forming galaxies and that may explain why they seem to have formed faster that expected. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_black_hole

    2. Re:Ahem... by kindbud · · Score: 4, Interesting

      To the extent that the observations and estimations of the galaxy's ages are accurate, yes it was enough time. Now they want to figure out how they formed more quickly than expected. If there is no reason to suspect that the observations and estimations are not accurate enough to rely on, then it must be our expectations of the time required for galaxy formation that is in need of revision.

      --
      Edith Keeler Must Die
  7. Merry christmas by mugurel · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just in time for Christmas,...

    Deep fried in infrared, duh! this is just the neighbor's christmas tree!

  8. It's not that big... by Golddess · · Score: 2, Informative

    That is simply awesome looking. But... only 2345x2039? The original maxed out at 6200x6200. What gives? :P

    --
    "I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
  9. Comparison Between 2004 and 2009 Images by _bug_ · · Score: 5, Informative

    I took the 2004 UDF image and rotated/cropped as needed to match with the 2009 UDF image so you can switch between the two and compare the differences.

    2004 UDF | 2009 UDF

    The new image uses infrared versus the visible light filters from the 2004 image. The resolution may not differ much between the two images, but the infrared will pick up deeper objects that we missed with the visible light filters. However the visible light image tends to pick up more detail such as in the spiral galaxy in the middle-left. That galaxy is known as UDF 7556 and what you see is how it was 6.1 billion years after the big bang.

    This stuff is so cool.

  10. Re:fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    If these images are infrared as they supposedly claim, why can I see them? Humans can't see infrared.

    It's a trick to out the aliens. You posted AC, but we will find you. Now, for the rest, if you will please read the following text...

    This post was caused by a static charge from a weather balloon igniting swamp gas.