The Deepest Picture of the Universe Ever Taken: the Hubble Extreme Deep Field

The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers have unveiled what may be the deepest image of the Universe ever created: the Hubble Extreme Deep Field, a 2 million second exposure that reveals galaxies over 13 billion light years away. The faintest galaxies in the images are at magnitude 31, or one-ten-billionth as bright as the faintest object your naked eye can detect. Some are seen as they were when they were only 500 million years old."

Comments

Hard to imagine the vastness

[icebike]

Ok, I officially feel small now.

I'm not sure whether to be more impressed by:
  1) the scale of the universe itself
  2) the ability of some insignificant bags of protoplasm on an insignificant planet near a run of the mill star, in a less than impressive galaxy could find a way to actually see that far
  3) the fact that they held the camera that steady for 2 million seconds (23 days)
  4) That the camera moved 36 million miles during those 23 days and it didn't make any difference in the final image.

But other than that, the image looks exactly like a gazillion other images from Hubble, so one has to take it on faith that it is what it says it is.

Re:Hard to imagine the vastness

[N0Man74]

4) That the camera moved 36 million miles during those 23 days and it didn't make any difference in the final image.

But other than that, the image looks exactly like a gazillion other images from Hubble, so one has to take it on faith that it is what it says it is.

IANAA, but it is that it is all relative. My gut feeling says that moving 36 million miles is still fairly still in the scale of the universe. Don't get me wrong, I'm still very impressed.

Re:Hard to imagine the vastness

[TheGratefulNet]

Ok, I officially feel small now.

so..... can we have your liver, then?

Re:Hard to imagine the vastness

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Space, is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

Re:Hard to imagine the vastness

[Matheus]

I was pondering on this recently and was thinking the following:

1) Light travels at that good ole' speed it does.

2) Scientists continually marvel at the fact they are seeing the universe far away the way it was millions or billions of years ago.

3) I never hear them comment on the fact what they are seeing has changed as much as our near universe in all of that time.

SO... what's to say we're not looking at the beginnings of literally millions (+?) of civilizations that in a few million years would look to the Hubble like we do now from up close?

Astronomers spend SO much of their time looking at light-speed forced history that I feel a certain slight is paid to what the present truly may be. The universe may be absolutely teaming with life that we won't be able to even see the beginnings of in ours or even our great-great-great-great-...........-great-great-grandchildren's lifetimes.

Anyway... back to pondering...

Re:Hard to imagine the vastness

[Pope]

Space is big
Space is dark
It's hard to find
A place to park
Burma Shave

Re:Hard to imagine the vastness

[Anonymous Coward]

Astronomers spend SO much of their time looking at light-speed forced history that I feel a certain slight is paid to what the present truly may be.

Time is not universal. Across these distances, you can't just take our local clock and apply it to some remote location. Your question of "What is happening 13 light-years away simultaneously with what we consider the present?" just doesn't have an answer on its own. You need to define your point of observation. If you are using us as your observer, then what you see through the telescope is what you get. That's your present day reality.

Astronomers grok this. That's why they don't bother with the science fiction,

Re:Hard to imagine the vastness

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

I don't meet a different cat every time I make a choice to feed mine wet or dry food. It's the same cat.

No fair - you peeked.

Re:2 million second exposure?

[Qzukk]

I'm not saying it can't be done, only that this seems a bit off.

It would have been longer but the guy with the finger on the shutter button had a sudden nose itch, and well, you know how it goes.

Re:2 million second exposure?

[Sarten-X]

They took many exposures totaling 23 days. From TFA:

This image is the combined total of over 2000 separate images, and the total exposure is a whopping two million seconds, or 23 days!

Re:Hey everybody, it's Phil Plait!

[Hatta]

Science doesn't promote itself. If there were any justice in the world, the Hubble team would be as celebrated as any sports team. This is certainly a much greater accomplishment than anything that happened at the Olympics. But that's not the world we live in. We need people like Phil Plait to publicly celebrate science. If there's a bit of self promotion in there too, so be it.

So much in so little sky...

[As_I_Please]

NASA's page about the eXtreme Deep Field has a picture showing the amount of sky photographed compared to the size of the moon. It looks like all 5500 galaxies could be covered up by a grain of sand held out at arms length.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up Plato, or we'll demote you to dwarf philosopher. Don't think we won't.