New Hubble Ultra Deep Field In Infrared 95
Hynee writes "Just in time for Christmas, HubbleSite has released a Hubble Ultra Deep Field redux. The original was in visible light; this version, five years on, is in infrared (1.05, 1.25 and 1.6 um).
The observation is in support of the upcoming JWST, which will observe exclusively in infrared, but the newly installed WFC3 does seem to provide some extra resolution over the 2004 visible observations with WFC2."
Re:That is FUCKING AMAZING. (Score:5, Informative)
How old does that make you? :-)
In any case, it is perhaps thanks to people like you that the field has advanced to such a degree when we can enjoy such mindbogglingly marvelous photos of the Universe.
Re:fake (Score:3, Informative)
From the article:
"Infrared light is invisible and therefore does not have colors that can be perceived by the human eye. The colors in the image are assigned comparatively short, medium, and long, near-infrared wavelengths (blue, 1.05 microns; green, 1.25 microns; red, 1.6 microns). The representation is "natural" in that blue objects look blue and red objects look red. The faintest objects are about one-billionth as bright as can be seen with the naked eye."
Re:Way to make me feel tiny Hubble (Score:2, Informative)
To put that into an easier perspective to visualize for people too lazy to check wikipedia before doing the calculations themselves, the width of the image is about 1/10th to 1/8th the diameter of the Moon seen from Earth (depending on when and where you are).
(Heh, captcha was "abstruse".)
Re:Need Bigger Hubble! (Score:2, Informative)
Well the 42m mirror E-ELT is coming up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Extremely_Large_Telescope
Too bad they cancelled the 100m OWL, it would have kicked ass http://www.gemini.edu/science/maxat/future/future.html
Besides, it had a much catchier name.
Re:Way to make me feel tiny Hubble (Score:3, Informative)
The new image is 2.4 arc-minutes wide according to hubblesite.org
It's not that big... (Score:3, Informative)
Comparison Between 2004 and 2009 Images (Score:5, Informative)
I took the 2004 UDF image and rotated/cropped as needed to match with the 2009 UDF image so you can switch between the two and compare the differences.
2004 UDF [imageshack.us] | 2009 UDF [imageshack.us]
The new image uses infrared versus the visible light filters from the 2004 image. The resolution may not differ much between the two images, but the infrared will pick up deeper objects that we missed with the visible light filters. However the visible light image tends to pick up more detail such as in the spiral galaxy in the middle-left. That galaxy is known as UDF 7556 and what you see is how it was 6.1 billion years after the big bang.
This stuff is so cool.
Re:Need Bigger Hubble! (Score:3, Informative)
The moral of the story is that if a handful of Bachelor's students can come up with a practical design concept in 9 months, there really is no reason that NASA, JPL, or, hell, even some commercial agency, couldn't set up a full telescope array on the dark side of the moon given proper funding and motivation. Then again, that's the kicker. Grades are great motivation for students. In the real world, someone has to fork over dollars, and people don't like doing that for science anymore....