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Hubble`s Advanced Camera unveils a panoramic new view of the Universe
April 30, 2002Jubilant astronomers today unveiled humankind`s most spectacular views of the Universe as captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope`s new Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). They also reported that Hubble is operating superbly since the March servicing mission and are looking forward to more pictures from the newly revived NICMOS camera.
"The ACS is opening a wide new window onto the Universe. These are among the best images of the distant Universe humans have ever seen," says Johns Hopkins University astronomer Holland Ford, the lead scientist in the ACS` seven-year development. "The ACS will let us obtain the deepest image of the Universe for the foreseeable future," added astronomer Garth Illingworth, the deputy leader for the ACS.
The camera`s tenfold increase in efficiency will open up much anticipated new `discovery space` for Hubble. "ACS will allow us to push back the frontier of the early Universe. We will be able to enter the `twilight zone` period when galaxies were just beginning to form out of the blackness following the cooling of the Universe from the Big Bang," says Ford.
Among the suite of four `suitable for framing` ACS science demonstration pictures released today is a stunning view of a colliding galaxy, dubbed the `Tadpole`, located 420 million light-years away. Unlike textbook images of stately galaxies, the `Tadpole` with a long tidal tail of stars, looks like a runaway pinwheel firework. It captures the essence of our dynamic, restless and violent Universe.
But what came as an unexpected bonus is the enormous number of galaxies behind the Tadpole galaxy - as many as 6000, twice the number in the legendary Hubble Deep Field (HDF) in 1995. Amazingly, the ACS picture was taken in one-twelfth the time it took for the original HDF, and in blue light it shows even fainter objects than the HDF. Like the HDF, the galaxies stretch back to nearly the beginning of time and contain myriad shapes that are snapshots of galaxies throughout the Universe`s 13 billion-year evolution.
The ACS images are so sharp astronomers can identify `building blocks` of galaxies, colliding galaxies, an exquisite `Whitman`s Sampler` of galaxies, and extremely distant galaxies in the field. The ACS image of the Tadpole illustrates the dramatic gains over the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 that were expected from doubling the area and resolution, and five times improvement in sensitivity.
The other pictures include a stunning collision between two spiral galaxies - dubbed `the Mice` - that presage what may happen to our own Milky Way several billion years in the future when it collides with the neighbouring galaxy in the constellation Andromeda. Computer simulations made by J. Barnes and J. Hibbard show that we are seeing the collision of the Mice approximately 160 million years after their closest encounter. Running the simulations forward in time shows that the two galaxies will eventually merge, forming an elliptical-like galaxy. A similar fate may await the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy.
Looking closer to home, ACS imaged the Cone Nebula, a craggy-looking mountaintop of cold gas and dust that is a cousin to Hubble`s iconic `pillars of creation` in the Eagle Nebula, photographed in 1995.
Peering into a celestial maternity ward called the Swan Nebula (M17), the ACS revealed a watercolour fantasy-world tapestry of vivid colours and glowing ridges of gas. Embedded in this crucible of star creation are embryonic planetary systems.
Mounted aboard the world`s premier optical-ultraviolet telescope, the ACS is a camera of superlatives. It is expected to go beyond the sensitivity of the largest ground-based telescope to eventually see the very faintest objects ever. Its camera delivers a panoramic crispness comparable to that of a wide-screen IMAX movie, a staggering 16 million picture elements (megapixels) per snapshot (typical consumer cameras are 2 to 4 megapixels).
European Space Agency (ESA)
Galaxies News and Current Galaxies Events RSSUCI scientists discover minimum mass for galaxies
By analyzing light from small, faint galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, UC Irvine scientists believe they have discovered the minimum mass for galaxies in the universe - 10 million times the mass of the sun.
GLAST Observatory renamed for Fermi, reveals entire gamma-ray sky
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and NASA announced today that the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) has revealed its first all-sky map in gamma rays.
Stellar still births
The systematics of celestial bodies apparently needs to be revised. Researchers at the Argelander Institute of Astronomy of the University of Bonn have discovered that brown dwarfs need to be treated as a separate class in addition to stars and planets.
Hubble sees magnetic monster in erupting galaxy
The Hubble Space Telescope has found the answer to a long-standing puzzle by resolving giant but delicate filaments shaped by a strong magnetic field around the active galaxy NGC 1275. It is the most striking example of the influence of these immense tentacles of extragalactic magnetic fields, say researchers.
Hubble unveils colourful star birth region on 100 000th orbit milestone
In commemoration of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100 000th orbit around the Earth in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal.
Study shows clumps and streams of dark matter in inner regions of the Milky Way
Using one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world to simulate the halo of dark matter that envelopes our galaxy, researchers found dense clumps and streams of the mysterious stuff lurking in the inner regions of the halo, in the same neighborhood as our solar system.
'Cosmic ghost' discovered by volunteer astronomer
When Yale astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski and his colleagues at Oxford University enlisted public support in cataloguing galaxies, they never envisioned the strange object Hanny van Arkel found in archived images of the night sky.
Caltech astronomers describe the bar scene at the beginning of the universe
Bars abound in spiral galaxies today, but this was not always the case. A group of 16 astronomers, led by Kartik Sheth of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, has found that bars tripled in number over the past seven billion years, indicating that spiral galaxies evolve in shape.
Accretion Discs Show Their True Colours
Quasars are the brilliant cores of remote galaxies, at the hearts of which lie supermassive black holes that can generate enough power to outshine the Sun a trillion times.
Hubble finds large sample of very distant galaxies
New Hubble Space Telescope observations of six spectacular galaxy clusters acting as gravitational lenses have given significant insights into the early stages of the Universe. Scientists have found the largest sample of very distant galaxies seen to date: ten promising candidates thought to lie at a distance of 13 billion light-years (~redshift 7.5).
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