Posted on 09/26/2012 7:22:19 PM PDT by lbryce
Like photographers assembling a portfolio of best shots, astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of mankind's deepest-ever view of the universe.
Called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photo was assembled by combining 10 years of NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a patch of sky at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The XDF is a small fraction of the angular diameter of the full moon.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is an image of a small area of space in the constellation Fornax, created using Hubble Space Telescope data from 2003 and 2004. By collecting faint light over many hours of observation, it revealed thousands of galaxies, both nearby and very distant, making it the deepest image of the universe ever taken at that time.
The new full-color XDF image is even more sensitive, and contains about 5,500 galaxies even within its smaller field of view. The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see.
We’re their Israel.
Fantastic photos!!
Just think--we're seeing through the Hubble Space Telescope what has not been seen from here on earth since Helen Thomas looked up at the night sky as a little girl and saw that galaxy being formed.
Amazing, profound, beautiful and mind boggling.....
Who else is out there and are they as amazed... when looking back at us?
Very cool video. Thanks for the link, although I would have preferred hearing Pink Floyd in the background. :)
Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLOth-BuCNY
Once I was deep in prayer, And I suddenly had a desire to know what it was like to be God and to know everything that was going on in the universe.
And for a moment, it felt like I did. Granted it seems an impossible number of individual things to know, but it was also just one thing to know. It was like a juggler juggling 1,000,000 balls, it wasn’t a matter of keeping track of the destiny of each individual ball, each ball was in motion set by the juggler, their path in life was by the will and power of the juggler who sent them. All the juggler had to keep in mind was setting into motion the balls coming to his hand, the paths of the ball’s he sent in motion, were set.
Or, you could say the will of God is like a stream of water so clear you can’t even see the water... you only way you can tell that the water’s there, is by the bubbles in it...and the bubbles are our reality, as we know it. But the reality we know, is actually nothing but empty air, carried along...the illusion of change, motion, time, energy we try to explain with physical laws, is nothing but a list of incidents relating to the actual motive force of Gods will.
Or, so it seemed that the time. It was only for a moment.
After we were married, my husband and I bought two large Hubble prints from an ad in the back of my Astronomy magazine. My husband picked the Eagle Nebula, but I had to have the Deep Field. We had them professionally framed and hung them in our offices.
It helps to wake me up and remember this is just a tiny bit of the great I AM’s craftwork. I can’t wait to see more.
Exactly. Almost like individual pixels on a computer screen. Each containing 5,000 galaxies. Incomprehensible magnitude.....
I still say that 15th galaxy across and 25 down, is 3 degrees of it’s true orientation, but they won’t listen...
WOW - - - - !
/s
/johnny
Now that’s what I look at and think, there is a God.
Not that the wonders of space doesn’t do it too, but a man has got to have his priorities straight.
:^.
An interesting thought crossed my mind some years ago that if a distant civilization, at this very time (today, right now), say, 75 million light years away, had a telescope capable of resolving Earth's surface features, and its inhabitants, they would actually be seeing dinosaurs running around. Because it would take that long for the 75 million year-old image to have reached them. Another one, say ~4.5 billion light years distant, Earth's formation.
It is amazing, and wonderful. Even on bad days, I have to appreciate the glory of the universe we've been given.
Do try to remember that you ARE part of that universe. Made of star-stuff, us humans.
/johnny
I’m sort of on “vacation” at the moment.
For later.
I just heard that theory expressed on a science show the other night. Frankly, I can't (or don't want to) wrap my mind around something so weirdly counter-intuitive as that.
What makes more sense to me, is the alternate theory of successive Big Bangs, wherein the universe expands to a certain point, then contracts in a Big Implosion, which of course, sets off another Big Bang.
Sort of a birth-growth-decay-death / birth-growth-decay-death cycle, but on a cosmic scale. The Immortal Universe.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.