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Hubble Telescope Captures Farthest View of the Universe Yet



A new, improved portrait of Hubble's deepest-ever view of the universe, called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, which shows a small area of space in the constellation Fornax, is seen in this composite image released to Reuters on September 25, 2012. By collecting faint light over many hours of observation, it revealed thousands of galaxies, both nearby and very distant, making it the deepest image of the universe ever taken.

They say the average picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s true, then the photo that the Hubble Space Telescope recently delivered is worth a thousand times that. The photo gives humankind a glimpse into the farthest corners of the universe yet.

To take the picture, which is called eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, Hubble gathered data over the course of ten years. The telescope focused on a tiny patch of sky in the southern constellation Fornax for more than 500 hours. By combining more than 2,000 images of the same field of space it was possible to register all the light emanating from that area. Only by accumulating light over so many observations can we see such distant objects, some of which are ten billion times too faint to be seen by the human eye. The XDF combines the images taken over 10 years of Hubble telescope views of that corner of the universe. As a NASA report on the XDF put it, “The history of galaxies — from soon after the first galaxies were born to the great galaxies of today, like our Milky Way — is laid out in this one remarkable image.”More at http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/26/hubble-telescope-incredible-view-u
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By the way, it's Hubble's birthday:

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This week the telescope celebrates its 22nd birthday in orbit, and the folks at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) are handing out party favors in the form of a dazzling new space image. Even by Hubble standards, it's pretty extraordinary.


The ESA has released this truly stunning image of the star forming region 30 Doradus

The photo — actually a mosaic assembled from 30 separate images — captures an enormous swath of space that's home to the biggest population of giant stars ever found. It's a swirling cloud of gas and dust known as the Tarantula nebula, and despite its forbidding name, it does some very creative work — serving as a nursery for entirely new stars. At the heart of the nebula is a stellar cluster known as NGC 2070, less than 3 million years old, containing about half a million young stars — some of which weigh in at as much as 100 times the mass of our own sun. The ultraviolet light spewing from these intensely hot bodies has carved out gaps in the surrounding cloud, much as the very first stars in the universe cleared gaps in the fog of gas that condensed out of the Big Bang. Not only that: the shock waves created by the barrage of ultraviolet are probably triggering yet another round of star formation that has barely begun.More at http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2112361,00.html]
I hope the image isn't too large for our text box, 'cuz it's gorgeous! More details about what it shows at http://youngastros.org/wordpress/image-of-the-week-hubbles-birthday-tr
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