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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."

13 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.

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    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 Fulseman · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    3. 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.

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      If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
    4. 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

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      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.

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    "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.

  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. 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?

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    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.

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      Edith Keeler Must Die
  5. 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.