Making the Hubble's deepest images even deeper

Phys.org ^ | January 24, 2019 | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

[ETL]

It has taken researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias almost three years to produce the deepest image of the universe ever taken from space, by recovering a large quantity of "lost" light around the largest galaxies in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field survey.

To produce the deepest image of the universe, a group of researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) led by Alejandro S. Borlaff used original images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) taken over a region in the sky called the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF). After improving the process of combining several images, the group was able to recover a large quantity of light from the outer zones of the largest galaxies in the HUDF. Recovering this light emitted by the stars in these outer zones was equivalent to recovering the light from a complete galaxy ("smeared out" over the whole field) and this missing light shows that some galaxies have diameters almost twice as large as previously measured.

The HUDF is the result of combining hundreds of images taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) of the HST during over 230 hours of observation which, in 2012, yielded the deepest image of the universe taken until then. But the method of combining the individual images was not ideally suited to detect faint extended objects. Borlaff says, "What we have done is to go back to the archive of the original images taken by the HST, and improve the process of combination, aiming at the best image quality not only for the more distant smaller galaxies, but also for the extended regions of the largest galaxies.

The WFC3 was installed by astronauts in May 2009, when the Hubble had already been in space for 19 years. This presented a major challenge for the researchers because the complete instrument (telescope and camera) could not be tested on the ground, which made calibration more difficult. To overcome the problems, they analysed several thousand images of regions across the sky with the aim of improving the calibration of the telescope on orbit.

"The deepest image of the universe has been possible thanks to a striking improvement in the techniques of image processing which has been achieved in recent years, a field in which the group working in the IAC is at the forefront," says Borlaff.

Explore further: Hubble goes deep

More information: Alejandro Borlaff et al. The missing light of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, Astronomy & Astrophysics (2018). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201834312

Journal reference: Astronomy & Astrophysics

[zeugma]

I love these deep fields. You can almost wrap your head around how infinitesimally tiny we are in the big picture, yet here we are.

I think the key work there is almost. I was astounded the first time I saw the original Hubble Deep Field. Especially when you consider that just about every speck represents an entire galaxy.

[Openurmind]

I have one of a Nebula on mine right now. Love those space backgrounds. I grabbed this one to use in the future.lol

Thanks!

[Red Badger]

Right now I’m using a satellite weather photo of the Atlantic and Caribbean Basin with four hurricanes in it..............

[Openurmind]

lol... that sounds cool. I don’t change mine that often. It takes awhile before I get tired of looking at it or something much cooler comes along.

[Larry Lucido]

Proof that galaxies are flat!

[Larry Lucido]

Wonder how/why God picked the Earth out of untold planets.

Good wine-grape growing areas in Tuscany.

[Red Badger]

Proof that galaxies are flat!

Except for the round ones.......................

[Red Badger]

Here it is: https://www.space.com/41790-4-powerful-storms-seen-from-space.html

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks TXnMA.

[TXnMA]

Thank you for posting that! The "information and awe" content of that photo is enormous!!

It went right into my "APOD-etc" folder, which "feeds" my screensaver -- an ever-changing collage of APOD and satellite views.

Whenever I'm setting up for a presentation, I turn on the screensaver -- and, invariably, I hear lots of "OOOh"s and "AAAhs". '-)

Must admit, though -- it's a bit humbling when I switch to my presentation screen -- and the audience says, "AWwwww..." ("One-upped" by a screensaver...)  '-}

TXnMA
 

[SunkenCiv]

Heh, yeah, that's one of the risks.

[from occupied ga]

Well, not today, anyways

Not now not ever. They were 13.4 billion light years away 13.4 billion years ago, but the universe is expanding. Today they're something like 46 billion light years away. Since the rate of the universe expansion is increasing they are receding at an ever increasing speed. If I understand this universe expansion stuff correctly, then at some threshold distance the objects beyond that distance will be moving away from us at greater than the speed of light. This is possible because space itself is expanding. So if we go with Einstein's speed limits there is some point that stuff will recede from us faster than the fastest thing in the universe can go.

[Red Badger]

I have always thought that the ‘universe’ is like a giant sphere that is being blown up like a balloon.

And if that is true, then anything you see on one side going away from you, you should be able to see in the opposite direction coming at you....................

[from occupied ga]

My understanding is that there is no center. That if you were transported magically to one of those galaxies and did the same Hubble look You’d see the same (statistically speaking) number of galaxies and same distribution of galaxies as we see.

[from occupied ga]

I think that sphere is probably not correct, that our ability observe is spherical, but as for what lies outside our observable universe - who knows? I read someplace that the latest estimate on the actual universe size is something like 10 - 15 orders of magnitude larger than what we see (don’t ask me how they came up with this) Further they can’t measure any curvature, and if the universe has no curvature, then it has no shape and becomes by mathematics infinite, which then blows up the big bang theory thus giving physicists nightmares and indigestion

[Red Badger]

I read a few days ago that some researchers had estimated the expansion rate of the universe as a ‘constant’. I don’t recall what the figure was but it seemed to me that to call it a ‘constant’ would be nearly impossible.

I would think that different portions would expand at different rates soon after the Big Bang, as different masses would create drag here and not there at random points.

After billions of years of expansion, at different rates, the actual ‘shape’ of the ‘universe’ would be like a bowl of spaghetti dropped from the third floor onto a sidewalk.............

[from occupied ga]

Just looked it up: theory is that universe is 10E23 time larger than the observable universe

[Red Badger]

So the universe is bigger than the universe?..................

[Red Badger]

So the universe is bigger than the universe?..................

[from occupied ga]

I agree that local gravity would slow things down, but I’m pretty sure I read in several places that the rate of expansion is increasing - something to do with “dark energy” whatever that is