Astronomy Picture Of The Day 9-01-02

NASA ^ | 9/01/02 | R Williams and the NASA Team

[sleavelessinseattle]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2002 September 1

The Hubble Deep Field
Credit: R. Williams, The HDF Team (STScI), NASA

Explanation: Galaxies like colorful pieces of candy fill the Hubble Deep Field - one of humanity's most distant optical views of the Universe. The dimmest, some as faint as 30th magnitude (about four billion times fainter than stars visible to the unaided eye), are very distant galaxies and represent what the Universe looked like in the extreme past, perhaps less than one billion years after the Big Bang. To make the Deep Field image, astronomers selected an uncluttered area of the sky in the constellation Ursa Major (the Big Bear) and pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a single spot for 10 days accumulating and combining many separate exposures. With each additional exposure, fainter objects were revealed. The final result has been used to explore the mysteries of galaxy evolution and the infant Universe.

Tomorrow's picture: Colorful Pillars of Light

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[sleavelessinseattle]

Not too shabby considering the original mirror is not focused properly.

[sleavelessinseattle]

[BossyRoofer]

I didn't realize how much work went into these pictures, thank you for your dedication. Good work APOD!

[sleavelessinseattle]

The sophistication of software used to combine multiple images superimposed one on the next is amazing. Quantity outweighs quality thanks to the humble silicon chip and some very bright programmers!

[RightWhale]

What's there is about 2 stars and 400 galaxies. There might be a lot of stars in the Milky Way, as those who live in areas still not terminally light-polluted can attest, but there are a lot more galaxies in the visible universe than stars in the Milky Way.

And here we sit, stuck on one mudball orbiting one backwater star.

[sleavelessinseattle]

Astronomy Fun Fact: Light travelling such huge distances doesn't travel in a perfectly straight line due to the influence of gravity. One of the most spectacular effects of this passage as seen by the observer(us earthlings) is gravitational lensing.
and the ultimate example of THAT is the Einstein Ring.

Of course we all know APOD is a BULLSEYE every night!

Happy/Safe LABOR DAY Weekend to ya FReepers!!!
BR
SS

[sleavelessinseattle]

stuck on one mudball orbiting one backwater star.

All our eggs in one infinitesmal basket BUMP!

[mtngrl@vrwc]

What a picture! This is an uncluttered part of the sky? WOW!

And as you always say, WTG God! ;-)

[glock rocks]

sometimes we can take these things to heart... in the quiet times...

Lord, thy system is so large

...and thy user so small.

[MeekOneGOP]

Incredible is the word. Wow ! Looks like the Universe's jewelry on display to me !

[sleavelessinseattle]

I can't hold my applause any longer...
WTG GOD!

[MeekOneGOP]

Amen!

[Aggie Mama]

I hope this doesn't sound like a stupid question, but I'm going to ask it anyway.... How in the world do they get pictures of our galaxy when we are in it? And secondly, what is in between the galaxies? Is empty space filled with anything, or is it truly empty?

[sleavelessinseattle]

Your question is a truism...We are incapable of photographing our Milky Way core in visible light due to the incredible density of dust and Dark Matter between our system and it...
Other wavelengths of Electromagnetic Spectra however pass right through the clouds and through extrapolation it is possible to reconstruct what the core would look like without the obscuring elements. And no, the idea of true vacuum is not what occurs in interstellar space. There are always individual atoms or molecules in a given area and furthermore...it is currently theorized that particles and their antiparticles actually arise SPONTANEOUSLY in "empty" space and annihilate each other leaving no trace that they ever existed...Although primarily theoretical, some scientific verification has been made that this occurs. If we could figure out how to manipulate these collisions it could be as big a breakthrough as AC current.