Here is the pic via The Dallas Morning News article ...Hubble images show deepest view of the universe
Posted on 03/09/2004 11:11:27 AM PST by alnitak
WOW i went there...i tink i drain bead now..i mean brain dead...
Well... Think about this. Take a really big magnifying glass. Look at a human hair or just the back of your hand. You will see lots of detail that you couldn't before. This doesn't mean the light hasn't reached you yet. It just means your eye wasn't adequate for seeing it in that detail.
Take this a bit further. Get a good pair of binos and look at something a few hundred meters away. You'll definitely see things that you couldn't see before but the light from that object was always there.
A telescope is just a 'light bucket'. It's designed to collect light. So is your eye. But the telescope's objective (its lens) is much bigger than the one in your eye- thus it can collect more light and you can see things with a telescope that your unaided eye could not. But the light was always there.
The light from those galaxies was there last year. Last century. We just didn't possess an instrument strong enough to view it. It's not like the 'first light' from that galaxy is 'just now' getting here. The light from that galaxy from last month is how that galaxy looked N Billion years ago minus one month.
The light was there before we had Hubble. We just didn't have the capability of seeing it.
You can go out on any given clear night and spot two or three planets, thus their light is plainly making it to Earth. But you won't see Saturn's rings without a scope- even though the light is available on any given evening.
Regards
When they reach the limits of the universe, what they will find are several billion socks and an equal amount of remote controls.
Well all of it. At any given time, when you look at the night heavens you are looking at objects that are different distances away from you.
We must remember though- all the light is getting to you at the same time.
Think about this. Let's say you live in St Louis. Now, you have a friend in every different major city in America. New York, LA, Atlanta etc. They all agree to get in their car and drive to your house. They will all leave at the same time. They will all drive at a constant speed of 40 MPH. They will all tell you what was playing on the television when they left.
They all leave at the same time. And when they eventually get to your house, they will all tell the same story about what was on the network news and so forth. But they will all get there at radically different times. For instance, the guy coming from Kansas City would tell you the news a long time before the guy from Anchorage. But they would all have the same story about the news because they all left at the same time.
Now, let's look at the experiment a different way. Again, your friends are going to drive to your house and tell you what was on the news. But this time, they are going to leave at different times- depending on their distance from you- in order that they might all arrive at the same time (picture Christmas Day- everybody wants to get there at 12 noon).
In other words. Your friends in Anchorage and LA will leave a lot sooner than your friends in Kansas City and Chicago in order that they arrive at the same time.
This time, when they all arrive, they will have different stories about what was on the news because they would have left at different times. For instance, the guy leaving from Anchorage might have news from two or three days earlier than the guy leaving from Atlanta. The only constant factor will be that you are receiving news that is all in the past. Some of the news will be older than other news but it will all already have happened although you might only be hearing it for the first time.
That's what you're facing when you look at the heavens. The light that gets here from Proxima Centauri (our closest star) gets here at the same time (from your perspective) as the light from the furthest galaxy. But they left at different times to get here at that instant. The light from Proxima Centauri is showing you what happened only 4 years ago. But other light that you can see at any given time when you look at the stars is showing you what happened thousands or millions or billions of years ago (depending upon how far away it is).
Just like those friends who left at different times in order to get to your house at the same instant and tell you what the news was at that moment, when we look at the heavens, we are viewing the 'news' that was current when that light left that object. And that news is different for each one because the distances we're dealing with are vast beyond imagination.
So, any particular part of the sky that you look at is revealing the news from different parts of the past because the objects you view in the sky are at radically differing distances.
I don't know if that's the simple terms you're looking for, but that's as simple as I know how to put. I hope that helps.
Here is the pic via The Dallas Morning News article ...Hubble images show deepest view of the universe
Hubble images show deepest view of the universe
Hubble images show deepest view of the universe06:06 PM CST on Tuesday, March 9, 2004
BALTIMORE – Astronomers unveiled the deepest-ever look into the distant reaches of the universe on Tuesday, revealing baby galaxies that lit up the cosmic darkness soon after the big bang.
Scientists hailed the two new long-exposure images, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, as some of the most awe-inspiring science ever to come from the orbiting observatory. Hubble took a similar picture of a distant spot in the universe in 1995, but the new pictures reach farther back, to a time when the first stars and galaxies were beginning to light up after the universe was born, about 13.7 billion years ago.
NASANearly 10,000 galaxies are seen in this composite image made with the Hubble Space Telescope and released by NASA on Tuesday. Click to: See the large Hubble image | Send it as an e-card"This is Hubble's day," said a jubilant Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland as she helped pull the curtain off a giant display showing at least 10,000 galaxies speckling the dark background of space.
But underlying the celebrations at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, where the Hubble is run and where the new images were presented, was an undercurrent of frustration and sadness that NASA has canceled a scheduled shuttle trip to refurbish the telescope. Without a visit from astronauts, the Hubble could stop working as early as 2007.
For now, astronomers are gobbling up every morsel of Hubble science, including the new images, known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.
To create the images, the space telescope repeatedly looked at a spot in the constellation Fornax, for a total of 1 million seconds, over several months. The resulting pictures revealed the myriad galaxies, some no brighter than a firefly's glow would be at the distance of the moon.
Light left those galaxies more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 5 percent of its current age, said Steven Beckwith, director of the space telescope institute.
Astronomer Massimo Stiavelli, leader of one of the two imaging teams, compared the Ultra Deep Field's improvement to watching the amazing growth of an infant in the critical period between 2 months and 4 months of age.
"This is a crucial time for the universe – a kind of teething time for the universe," he said.
One of the new images comes from the telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys, a phone-booth-sized 16-megapixel digital camera installed by visiting astronauts in 2002. Its sharp focus can make out details in the most distant galaxies.
The other image comes from the NICMOS instrument, which had run out of its needed coolant and stopped working until the astronauts installed a special refrigerator in 2002 to rejuvenate it. It works in near-infrared wavelengths, which allows it to photograph more distant – and thus older – cosmic objects than the advanced camera can but with slightly less clarity.
Astronomers won't see anything else like the Ultra Deep Field for a long time, said Dr. Beckwith. Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, isn't scheduled for launch until 2011, and it will study the universe only in infrared wavelengths.
Hubble's life expectancy is now dictated mainly by its aging batteries, which were due to be replaced on the servicing mission in 2006, and its gyroscopes, which are needed to point the telescope properly. After both fail, NASA plans to fly an unmanned rocket that will attach itself to Hubble and guide it safely to a crash landing in the ocean.
NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe canceled the 2006 servicing mission to Hubble in January, after President Bush announced that the space shuttle, when it returns to flight, should focus on completing the International Space Station. Sen. Mikulski, whose district includes the space telescope institute, has asked Mr. O'Keefe to gather expert commentary on that decision, in hopes of reversing it.
Congressman Mark Udall of Colorado last week introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives urging that Mr. O'Keefe appoint an independent panel to examine all possible options for carrying out the servicing mission.
E-mail awitze@dallasnews.com
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/030904dnnatuniverse.6c4b18b5.html
So "as many stars as there are grains of sand" isn't really that far off of an estimate.
Or better yet, the deficit, as a percent of total stars, is not significantly above historic levels.
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