12/31/2023 0 Comments Hubble pictures![]() The idea for the Hubble Deep Fields originated in results from the first deep images taken after the repair in 1993. The different deep fields are also a good gathering grounds to find the most distant objects ever observed. Using the different Hubble Deep fields astronomers were able to study young galaxies in the early Universe and the most distant primeval galaxies. In the case of the Hubble Deep and Ultra Deep Fields, it is the extreme distances involved which make them faint, and hence make observations challenging. Astronomical objects can either look faint because their natural brightness is low, or because of their distance. longer exposure time), the fainter are the objects that become visible on the images. Because of the time it has taken their light to reach us, we see some of these galaxies as they were just half a billion years after the Big Bang.ĭeep field observations are long-lasting observations of a particular region of the sky intended to reveal faint objects by collecting the light from them for an appropriately long time. Subsequent deep imagery from Hubble, including the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, has revealed the most distant galaxies ever observed. The first deep fields – Hubble Deep Field North and South – gave astronomers a peephole to the ancient Universe for the first time, and caused a real revolution in modern astronomy. The Deep Fields gave astronomers the first really clear look back to the time when galaxies were forming. Images of faint galaxies give 'fossil' clues as to how the Universe looked in the remote past and how it may have evolved with time. Only their burned-out cores remain, and they are called white dwarfs (the faint blue dots in the image).One of the main scientific justifications for building Hubble was to measure the size and age of the Universe and test theories about its origin. ![]() When the helium runs out, the stars reach the end of their lives. At this stage, they emit much of their light at ultraviolet wavelengths. These stars are desperately trying to extend their lives by fusing helium in their cores. Only a thin layer of material covers their super-hot cores. These bright red stars swell to many times larger than our Sun's size and begin to shed their gaseous envelopes.Īfter ejecting most of their mass and exhausting much of their hydrogen fuel, the stars appear brilliant blue. These late-life stars are the orange dots in the image.Įven later in their life cycles, the stars continue to cool down and expand in size, becoming red giants. ![]() Toward the end of their normal lives, the stars become cooler and larger. These are adult stars that are shining by hydrogen fusion. The majority of the stars in the image are yellow-white, like our Sun. The cluster lies about 16,000 light-years from Earth. The stars in Omega Centauri are between 10 billion and 12 billion years old. The image reveals a small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri, which holds nearly 10 million stars. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope snapped this panoramic view of a colorful assortment of 100,000 stars in the core of a giant star cluster. That means a great deal more work and a great many more images-before the metal eyelid closes forever.Ĭolorful Stars Inside Globular Star Cluster Omega Centauri: Hubble still has close to a decade of life left to it. The fifty images that follow are just a sampling of the telescope’s vast body of work. All have been mile-markers in the always-maturing field of astronomy. Some of Hubble’s images have become cultural icons-Pillars of Creation, the Horsehead Nebula. And then, on January 13, 1994, the newly sharpened eye blinked open, the cosmos appeared before it and the first of one million observations the telescope has made since then began pouring back to Earth. It would be three and a half years before a fix could be devised and built and flown to orbit and shuttle astronauts could set the myopic mirror right. (2.4 m) primary mirror that had been polished to tolerances of just 10 nanometers-or 10 one-billionths of a meter-hadn’t turned out to be nearsighted, warped by the equivalent of 1/50th the thickness of a sheet of paper. Hubble started off sickly, a long-awaited, breathlessly touted, $1.5 billion machine that was supposed to change astronomy forever from almost the moment it went into space, and might have too if its celebrated 94.5 in.
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