Astronomers publish largest near infrared image from Hubble telescope – IT Pro – News

nice development again! Keep it up NASA!

What I do wonder (and those folks are smarter than me so they’ve already ticked that off):

– how many of the systems are ‘double’ on this type of photo?
Because in theory there could be an image from 10 billion years ago and a little further down a version from 1 billion years ago?
Or how does that work?

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If there are duplicate systems in the photo, it may be because they are e.g. came into the telescope’s field of view several times as it took pictures. (e.g. day x telescope took pictures of a certain part and on day xx telescope took pictures of an adjacent part with some overlap)

In your way, it would theoretically say that we humans have suddenly made a 9 billion year jump between taking a picture of a 1 billion year old galaxy, and taking a picture of the same galaxy that is now 10 billion years old. is. That’s how it works id. not.

We cannot see a galaxy “grow up” beyond the period in which we can observe it, so within 10 years we can observe that same system when it is 10 billion + 10 years old.

Think of it as 2 points on a very long ruler called “time”: you (we) are at a certain point, the galaxy is at a certain point, far apart. Both are moving forward in time but the distance from each other does not change (in fact it does change*, but not fast enough to “suddenly” perceive the same galaxy 9 billion years younger or older)

Our position in time is therefore roughly the same as the position in time of the observed system, the position -or the age of that system at which we can observe it- is determined by the distance between us and the system (and some variables such as gravitational lensing effect of massive objects between observer and observed object.)

It’s a bit simplified and there’s a bit more to it, but I like to use this analogy because it also shows in a clear way that time and space are intrinsically intertwined…

*The universe is of course not static, we have known for a long time, objects also move relative to each other and to us, this can be observed through the phenomena blueshift (coming closer) or redshift (leaving away from us). depending on whether the object gets closer or farther away, the frequency of the light it reflects back to the observer changes (dopple defect)

It also has to do with reading “near infrared image” in the title of the article. The most distant objects observable to us are often in the invisible light spectrum and since most of them are still moving away from us, they are therefore on the infra-red side of that spectrum. That is why they needed a special camera to photograph these objects.

(No, I’m not an astronomer, but it’s kind of a hobby. )

[Reactie gewijzigd door YourMom op 8 juni 2022 16:38]

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