Something interesting that I would like to point out is that, as most of you may know, as light from such remote sources travels through space to us, due to universal expansion, it stretches out to longer wavelengths. ie, it is “red shifted”.
And in a case like this, an object 11 billion light-years distant, the shift is comparatively large. In other words, for us to receive these images in the near infrared today, the light must have started out at a shorter wavelength, quite possibly within the visible/optical range.
An even more interesting thing, IMO, would be in the case where light from a somewhat less distant source is received in the visible/optical range (less red-shifted), meaning it possibly started out in the ultra-violet UV range.
So we would then be ‘seeing’ something with our own eye from the UV part of the EM spectrum.
Non-visible/optical images (infrared, UV, gamma, microwave, radio, etc) are typically converted to false color images in order that there is something for people to see and study.
“Non-visible/optical images (infrared, UV, gamma, microwave, radio, etc) are typically converted to false color images in order that there is something for people to see and study.”
I don’t know which type of eye-candy I like better, super-enhanced digital images of galaxies, stars and nebulae light years away or some of the cars I’ve been seeing in HDTV on the Barrett-Jackson and Mecum auto auctions.
That’s one interpretation, by far the most common one. There’s another one, you say, ‘Civ? That guy, he never gives up... ;^)
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/haltonarp/index?tab=articles
Cosmology and astronomy are simply fascinating!