Hubble Deep Field

Don Nardo

Description

A series of photos taken from space more than 20 years ago revealed thousands of unknown galaxies in a tiny patch of "empty" space. Called the Hubble Deep Field, the amazing image is made up of hundreds of photos combined into one. It was taken over the course of 10 days from the Hubble Space Telescope and has prompted astronomers and other scientists to speculate about universe's size, shape, and age. How long ago did the first galaxies appear? Have they always looked like they do today, or have their shapes evolved over time? And will they, along with the universe itself, go on expanding forever? The Hubble Deep Field has helped to answer some of these questions.

Informations

• Publié par: Capstone Global Library
• Date de parution: 02 novembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781474748575
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

HUBBLE

DEEP FIELD

H OW A PH OTO R E VO L UTI O N I Z E D O U R U N D E R STA N D I N G O F TH E U N I V E R S E HUBBLEDELDEEPIF

CAPTURED SCIENCE HISTORY

HUBBLEDEEPFIELD H O W A P H O T O R E V O L U T I O N I Z E D O U R U N D E R S TA N D I N G O F T H E U N I V E R S E

by Don Nardo

Content Adviser: Frank Summers, PhD Outreach Astrophysicist Space Telescope Science Institute

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Edited by Catherine Neitge Designed by Tracy Davies McCabe and Catherine Neitge Media Research by Svetlana Zhurkin Library Consultation by Kathleen Baxter Production by Laura Manthe Originated by Capstone Global Library Limited ISBN 978 1 4747 4853 7 (paperback) 21 20 19 18 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A full catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce photographs: Alamy: Pictorial Press Ltd., 17, 56; Courtesy of Dr. Robert Williams, 27, 29; ESA/ NASA/Hubble, 35, 40–41; Getty Images: Corbis/VCG/Roger Ressmeyer, 21, The LIFE Picture Collection/J.R. Eyerman, 19, 57 (right); iStockphoto: rappensuncle, 22; NASA: 5, 9, 10, 11, 25, 39, 51, 57 (left), R. Williams (STScI) and the Hubble Deep Field Team, 13, 58 (right), STScI/Hubblesite, 48; NASA/ESA: H. Teplitz and M. Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst (ASU), Z. Levy (STScI), 50, Holland Ford (JHU), the ACS Science Team, 49, Hubble, 38, J. Lotz (STScI), 55, 59 (right), M. Postman and D. Coe (STScI), and the CLASH Team, 53, M. Robberto (STScI/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team, 43, P. van Dokkum (Yale University), S. Patel (Leiden University), and the 3D-HST Team, 45, Robert Williams and the Hubble Deep Field Team (STScI), cover, 31, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team, 58 (left), Z. Levay (STScI/AURA), 37, Z. Levay, STScI, Moon image T. Rector, I. Dell’Antonio/NOAO/AURA/NSF, 47; Shutterstock: AuntSpray, 24, Cezary Stanislawski, 23, 59 (left), Denis Belitsky, 6, isak55, 7, Marcel Clemens, 15, Viktar Malyshchyts, 33 Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders of material reproduced in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in subsequent printings if notice is given to the publisher. All the internet addresses (URLs) given in this book were valid at the time of going to press. However, due to the dynamic nature of the internet, some addresses may have changed, or sites may have changed or ceased to exist since publication. While the author and publisher regret any inconvenience this may cause readers, no responsibility for any such changes can be accepted by either the author or the publisher.

Printed and bound in China.

CONTENTS

4 ChapterOne:............Bold hunt for distant galaxies 14 ChapterTwo:To the edge of the universe............. rThree:What Hubble Deep Field shows ..... 30 Chapte. 42 ChapterFour:New level of cosmic immensity .......

56 Timeline ......................................................... 60 Glossary ......................................................... ....................................... 61 Additional resources .. 62 Source notes ................................................... 63 Select bibliography .......................................... 64 Index .............................................................

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ChapterOne BOLD HUNT FOR DISTANT GALAXIES

Astronomer Bob Williams and his scientific team prepared to take a big risk in December 1995, a risk that could have ended Williams’ distinguished career as a scientist. It involved taking a series of photographs. Williams was keenly aware that there was great power in certain photos. Still fresh in his mind was the Blue Marble – a magnificent portrait of Earth taken from high above by US astronauts in 1972. It had caught the attention of people around the globe, showing that they lived on a tiny, fragile sphere floating in the vastness of space. Williams wanted to capture a very different sort of image – one of an area of space extremely far away from our planet. Two years before, he had become director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which ran the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Hubble Space Telescope. Launched into space in 1990, NASA’s Hubble held out the promise of clearly seeing cosmic objects so distant that they appeared dim and blurry from ground-based telescopes. Williams wanted to point Hubble at a tiny patch of sky near the handle of the Big Dipper, in the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear. The patch covers an area as big as a grain of sand held at arm’s

Apollo 17 astronauts took a photo of Earth in 1972 that became known as the Blue Marble.

length. The plan was to take hundreds of pictures of the target area during 10 days. Sophisticated computer software would combine them into a single image. The goal was almost too ambitious to imagine. Williams and his team wanted to test the outer limits of space and time. We know that the speed of light is 300,000 kilometres (186,000 miles) per second. The light from a very distant galaxy travels at that speed. So if the light has been travelling for millions

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