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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBBC: Hubble captures extraordinary view of Universe
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has produced one of its most extraordinary views of the Universe to date. Called the eXtreme Deep Field (XDF), the picture captures a mass of galaxies stretching back almost to the time when the first stars began to shine.
But this was no simple point and snap - some of the objects in this image are too distant and too faint for that. Rather, this view required Hubble to stare at a tiny patch of sky for more than 500 hours to detect all the light.
"It's a really spectacular image," said Dr Michele Trenti, a science team member from the University of Cambridge, UK.
Of the more than 5,000 galaxies in the XDF, one of them (UDFj-39546284) is a candidate for the most distant galaxy yet discovered. If this is confirmed, it means it is being seen just 460 million years after the Universe's birth in the Big Bang. Scientists time that event to be 13.7 billion years ago.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19728375
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BBC: Hubble captures extraordinary view of Universe (Original Post)
pampango
Sep 2012
OP
onehandle
(51,122 posts)1. Most people have no idea how big the universe is.
The universe that we know of, that is.
Of course there's life out there.
Bandit
(21,475 posts)2. Well tell us, just how big is it?
Inquiring minds want to know..
randome
(34,845 posts)4. No one has an 'idea' if by that, you mean we can conceptualize it.
All we have are numbers. It's still awesome.
HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)6. Yes they do. It generally ends at the sidewalk.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)8. No, you're dead wrong on this one.
The Universe extends all the way to Shelbyville.
Be sure to wear an onion on your belt.
HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)9. Well, perhaps East Bumfuck, but Shelbyville?
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)10. They called it Morganville in those days.
Back when you could get five Bees for a quarter.
Grampa: We can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time.
Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where was I... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn't get white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where was I... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn't get white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
Very cool.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)5. 500 hours and a cool sensor
That is a cool photo and yes, there is life out there.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)7. If I had the math gene I'd have become a cosmologist
or a theoretical physicist. Many people on the autism spectrum have that gift, but I don't. Carl Sagan's Cosmos changed the way I look at everything when it was first broadcast. I can wrap my head around the concepts, but the math may as well be in Chinese - I just can't get it.