The Deepest Picture of the Universe Ever Taken: the Hubble Extreme Deep Field 185
The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers have unveiled what may be the deepest image of the Universe ever created: the Hubble Extreme Deep Field, a 2 million second exposure that reveals galaxies over 13 billion light years away. The faintest galaxies in the images are at magnitude 31, or one-ten-billionth as bright as the faintest object your naked eye can detect. Some are seen as they were when they were only 500 million years old."
Re:2 million second exposure? (Score:5, Informative)
They took many exposures totaling 23 days. From TFA:
This image is the combined total of over 2000 separate images, and the total exposure is a whopping two million seconds, or 23 days!
Re:The Great Silence (Score:4, Informative)
The amount of time that intelligent critters who can manipulate tools and create recognizable radio signals for communication is likely to be very brief. In less than a century, data compression and encryption will make almost all of our radio traffic look like static from the outside. The vaguely intelligible bits sent out prior to that are so weak that they'll likely never be received or interpreted. Bottom line? Lack of intelligent radio indicates nothing.
Jupiter's natural radio emissions are much more powerful than the total of all Earth-based signals. Even if one was looking for radio signals from our system, we wouldn't be the loudest voice.