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.
I'm not going to double check your work, but it's amazing that we were all touching at one time.
LOL! I just watched that MP clip you linked. I never saw that skit before. The music is the same theme as that from the conclusion of their film Life Of Brian (”Always Look On the Bright Side of Life”).
The human mind simply doesn't the capacity to fully imagine the total scope of what we behold in the night sky.
I mean, just try picturing your entire field of vision in a spherical, 360 degree aspect, divided into segments as small as a grain of sand held at arm's length. Then, imagine that there are at least 5,000 galaxies in every one of those segments - each containing 50 to 200 BILLION stars.
I don't think I can do it. In fact, I know that I can't.
I'm telling you, people who think the only life in the cosmos is on this planet, just aren't thinking with the staggering numbers involved with the question.
According to Big Bang Inflation theory, the entire universe, currently 13.2 billion light years in radius, and assuming we're actually 'seeing' to its near end/beginning, was once contained within a volume of space many billions of times smaller than the nucleus of a hydrogen atom.
A grain of sand held at arm’s length is roughly 1/12th the apparent diameter of the full moon. The Hubble eXtreme field, I believe, is even tinier than that. Amazing achievement. Then again, astronomers didn’t do that, Obama did!
Each time I view this, I just cannot help thinking that we, the human race, is the highlight and the epitome of creation in the history of time.
I think I'll have to find a copy...
Carl Sagan “100 Billion Galaxies each W/100 Billion Stars”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ex__M-OwSA
From the play Our Town:
REBECCA: I never told you about that letter Jane Crofut got from her minister when she was sick. He wrote Jane a letter and on theenvelope the address was like this: It said: Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover’s Corners; Sutton County; New Hamp-shire; United States of America.
GEORGE: What’s funny about that?
REBECCA: But listen, it’s not finished: the United States of America; Conti-nent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God — that’s what it said on the envelope.
GEORGE:
What do you know!
REBECCA: And the postman brought it just the same.
GEORGE: What do you know!
Makes you wonder how big Michelle’s shorts will be after they can no longer maintain pressure.
Galaxies Like Grains of Sand by Brian Aldiss
Thanks for the tip. I'll have to read it. That was an excellent recommendation.
And the miniscule segments wouldn't be 'slices'. They would be more like little squares of which a tiny grain of sand (held at arm's length) would fill.
Six trillion miles *shakes head* it is hard to get your head around that distance..!
LOL... perhaps.
Thanks lbryce. Am simply in awe.
Carl Sagan on the Tonight Show w/ Johnny Carson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NsvOaYher8
A mystery, of why there is so much static. Maybe and I do not know if this is anywhere correct, though, could it be frequency modulation problems, or perhaps use of the wrong spectrum?
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