NASA Captures the Deepest Pictures of Galaxies in Space
- 11 years ago
Images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are the deepest view of the universe ever captured, including hundreds of galaxies that are billions of light years away from Earth.
New images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope see further into the universe than ever before, capturing not just hundreds of galaxies approximately 3 and a half billion light years away, but also distant background galaxies believed to be over 12 billion light years from Earth.
Under NASA’s Frontier Fields Program, Hubble, along with the Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory, uses the gravity from clusters of galaxies to brighten, warp and magnify the light from background galaxies beyond. Cluster Abell 2744 has provided the deepest images of the universe through this effect known as gravitational lensing.
Brian Siana from the University of California at Riverside is quoted as saying: “There's always been a concern that we've only found the brightest of the distant galaxies - the tip of the iceberg. Now we have found those 'unseen' galaxies, and we're really confident we're seeing the rest of the iceberg.”
According to NASA officials, galaxies in the background of the picture appear to be 10 to 20 times bigger than normal, and the galaxies giving off the least amount of light are 10 to 20 times dimmer than any galaxy ever observed before.
Data from these images will help astronomers better understand the distant galaxies of the universe.
New images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope see further into the universe than ever before, capturing not just hundreds of galaxies approximately 3 and a half billion light years away, but also distant background galaxies believed to be over 12 billion light years from Earth.
Under NASA’s Frontier Fields Program, Hubble, along with the Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory, uses the gravity from clusters of galaxies to brighten, warp and magnify the light from background galaxies beyond. Cluster Abell 2744 has provided the deepest images of the universe through this effect known as gravitational lensing.
Brian Siana from the University of California at Riverside is quoted as saying: “There's always been a concern that we've only found the brightest of the distant galaxies - the tip of the iceberg. Now we have found those 'unseen' galaxies, and we're really confident we're seeing the rest of the iceberg.”
According to NASA officials, galaxies in the background of the picture appear to be 10 to 20 times bigger than normal, and the galaxies giving off the least amount of light are 10 to 20 times dimmer than any galaxy ever observed before.
Data from these images will help astronomers better understand the distant galaxies of the universe.