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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."

6 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 Fulseman · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.