The Most Distant Galaxies Ever Seen

In August, after the last repair mission on the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers directed its newest camera towards the same area of sky where just five years ago, the first Hubble Ultra Deep field image was made and recorded a new one - this time in the near-infrared, a wavelength invisible to the human eye.

Over the course of four days, the camera shutter was open for one hundred seventy three thousand seconds and astronomers collected photons that had left their galaxies over 13 billion years ago. Sensitive to slightly longer wavelengths than its predecessors, the newly installed camera known as Wide Field Camera three recorded objects that are likely the oldest galaxies ever identified, having formed only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Here are the results.

[Music montage and interlude, couple minutes (music: Daemon portal)]

Hubble's new camera looks closer towards the Big Bang than any of the earlier cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope because it collects light from near-infrared wavelengths. The expansion of the universe stretches light from hot young stars in these very distant galaxies out of the ultraviolet and visible regions of the spectrum and into near-infrared wavelengths, making them redder and invisible to the human eye.

As we build instruments sensitive to longer and longer wavelengths, we are able to peer farther into the cosmos and each wavelength brings us views closer to the edge of the universe. When we focus our instruments outside the narrow band of light visible to our eyes, past the infrared and towards microwave and radio wavelengths, we open other windows that allow us to see deeper than ever before possible.

The farthest we can ever hope to see reaches its limit in the microwave region of the spectrum. This is the wavelength of the radiation given off by the entire universe as it cools, which began just a few hundred thousand years after the big bang.

This latest upgrade of the cameras on board the Hubble Space Telescope is setting the stage for a host of new discoveries. Because of the sensitivity to longer wavelengths, Hubble is showing us the most distant galaxies ever seen by human beings and we are able to capture glimpses of our universe like this.

Hubble Press Release (including animations used):
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/31/

Music used:
http://www.garageband.com/artist/green_man

Tracks:
She Moved Through the Fair
The Shiny Penny

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• hubble deep field
• most Important Image
• cosmology
• astronomy

[Rabsmyth1]

@jaredmay567 lol you can't be serious? Proof for god look out the window? The big bang theres one logical explanation. And what god? Allah? Krishna? Buddha?

[Romans10Verse9]

Hot young stars? Perverted universe...

[jaredmay567]

@adamjosiah123 of you want proof of a god, look outside, see the tress, the animals, the world as he made it. And the world is messed up because god gave us control over it and we screwed up. That's why this world is messed up. And if there is no god, then tell me how all this could happen, how the universe could be made, because if you can come up with one logical response, I will shut up about it.

[SilverfangX777]

@adamjosiah123 Also your wrong on pretty much all your objections are wrong. I'll send you a PM

[SilverfangX777]

@adamjosiah123 Ok then sorry about that,...anyways I'll send you a PM

[adamjosiah123]

@SilverfangX777 I'm not anything, i'm a human being, i don't like being labeled any kind of religion or anything.

[SilverfangX777]

@adamjosiah123 OK so your basically an agnostic, If I'm correct. I'll continue this conversation later in the day via PM. I have to be somewhere right now, is that ok with you?

[adamjosiah123]

@SilverfangX777 I do believe there is something that created all this but we as humans could never comprehend or imagine what that could be. Human beings just wrote the bible to comprehend being human and to have something to live for. Truth is we humans have no idea what the hell is going on in this ocean of chaos we call life.

[adamjosiah123]

@SilverfangX777 What does it say about the earth being made? That it and the universe was made in 7 days? Ya thats bullshit. If god was real then why is this world so fucked? Why are people so stupid? Why would god care about just us on this small spec of dust insignificant planet? It dosnt say shit in the bible about science. Dosnt talk about how big the universe is cause they didnt know shit when they wrote it. It says we are the only ones in the universe witch is absolute bullshit.

[SilverfangX777]

@adamjosiah123 OK then, This is just one little peice,I'll type more after I get some sleep Did you know that the book of genesis, the first book of the bible, is in ABSOLUTE harmony with the way science says the earth was made. If the book is read within context and not taken literally. Now it's your turn show me prooof God doesn't exists