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.
Or, just perhaps, as the evidence seems to indicate, we are alone and it’s up to us to spread life throughout the Universe. If that’s the case then we hard better stop all this control-freak fighting amongst ourselves and get about our real work.
It is true, from every point in the universe, all one can see is the past. Since only the past is visible and we are relying on radio waves to make first contact, one could only connect with the past.
/johnny
Nice ... but I prefer natural with one just slightly larger than the other...
I get more thinking done when staring at the Hubble pic, but at this moment in time I’m not thinking anything but “dang she shore is purty”
TT
and mine our solar system.
Yes, they have, and I want to warn you about the cheap, tacky comment I’m about to make, only because I loath the man so much I cannot in good conscience allow it to pass un-responded, one you’ve heard infinite times before and will continue to hear for as long as forever that they in fact did find Obama’s birth certificate deep within the frozen crevices found in the South Pole of Uranus.
I followed that math as far as cooks are allowed to. I can't go further. I'm ok with counter-intuitive, but some math...
Hey! Want fries with that?
/johnny
Out of 100 billion galaxies, each containing at least 100 billion stars - and each of those with multiple planets likely orbiting around them - you think that we humans on this one little planet, circling an insignificant star in a mediocre galaxy, are the epitome of all creation?
I sorta doubt it. There's an unbelievably vast universe out there with wonders we can scarcely dream of.
Yet we're all part of it. We're on this 8,000 mile wide ball-shaped rock zipping around our star at approximately 66,000 miles per hour (over 18 miles per second). Our speed around the galaxy is much faster than that. Include our galaxy's motion within the Local Group, etc, etc... There may not be an end to it.
I think we're looking at the wrong carrier wave.
And who knows what Dezi and Lucy sound like 20 billion light years from earth anyway? Probably sounds like, "hissssssssss......"
Isn't that just recycling on an accelerated and grand scale? After all the chemicals/minerals all come the stars and are there waiting to be used by living things.
I'll bet they're just as amazed as we are. I'll bet they're also arguing over whether there's intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Funny, when you think about it.
Reminds me of Twilight Zone. The universe is infinite. The past is infinite. The future is infinite. The past is the future. Head is starting to hurt. This always happens, when going there only to find the past, in the present.
Probably. Everything awaits discovery, nothing is truly an invention.
Honey? Where did we park the car?
That question takes on a whole new meaning.
The answer, of course, is "Back there".
/johnny
But the current evidence points to a universe that is *accelerating* in its expansion. Before that, it was believed the universe was expanding at a progressively slower rate --that it would go on decelerating forever, yet never collapse. Who knows.
I wish I could tell them that there might be. Just not here. ;)
/johnny
No. Oh. Wow. Really?
I love that vision, but I attribute that knowingness to the individual - not a supreme creator. 'Reality', space, matter, energy, time --- all of it created by the collective agreements of we spirits who drive these temporary bodies.
Thank you for the profound thoughts.
Yes, interesting thoughts.
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