Hubble’s Messier Catalog By NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

sometimes i think about the golden record and i want to cry

Hubble’s Guide to Viewing Deep Fields

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but no images have left a greater impact on our understanding of the universe quite like the Hubble Space Telescope’s deep fields. Like time machines, these iconic images transport humanity billions of light-years back in time, offering a glimpse into the early universe and insight into galaxy evolution!

You’ve probably seen these images before, but what exactly do we see within them? Deep field images are basically core samples of our universe. By peering into a small portion of the night sky, we embark on a journey through space and time as thousands of galaxies appear before our very eyes.

So, how can a telescope the size of a school bus orbiting 340 miles above Earth uncover these mind-boggling galactic masterpieces? We’re here to break it down. Here’s Hubble’s step-by-step guide to viewing deep fields:

Step 1: Aim at the darkness

Believe it or not, capturing the light of a thousand galaxies actually begins in the dark. To observe extremely faint galaxies in the farthest corners of the cosmos, we need minimal light interference from nearby stars and other celestial objects. The key is to point Hubble’s camera at a dark patch of sky, away from the outer-edge glow of our own galaxy and removed from the path of our planet, the Sun, or the Moon. This “empty” black canvas of space will eventually transform into a stunning cosmic mosaic of galaxies.

The first deep field image was captured in 1995. In order to see far beyond nearby galaxies, Hubble’s camera focused on a relatively empty patch of sky within the constellation Ursa Major. The results were this step-shaped image, an extraordinary display of nearly 3,000 galaxies spread across billions of light-years, featuring some of the earliest galaxies to emerge shortly after the big bang.

Step 2: Take it all in

The universe is vast, and peering back billions of years takes time. Compared to Hubble’s typical exposure time of a few hours, deep fields can require hundreds of hours of exposure over several days. Patience is key. Capturing and combining several separate exposures allows astronomers to assemble a comprehensive core slice of our universe, providing key information about galaxy formation and evolution. Plus, by combining exposures from different wavelengths of light, astronomers are able to better understand galaxy distances, ages, and compositions.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is the deepest visible-light portrait of our universe. This astonishing display of nearly 10,000 galaxies was imaged over the course of 400 Hubble orbits around Earth, with a total of 800 exposures captured over 11.3 days.

Step 3: Go beyond what’s visible

The ability to see across billions of light-years and observe the farthest known galaxies in our universe requires access to wavelengths beyond those visible to the human eye. The universe is expanding and light from distant galaxies is stretched far across space, taking a long time to reach us here on Earth. This  phenomenon, known as “redshift,” causes longer wavelengths of light to appear redder the farther they have to travel through space. Far enough away, and the wavelengths will be stretched into infrared light. This is where Hubble’s infrared vision comes in handy. Infrared light allows us to observe light from some of the earliest galaxies in our universe and better understand the history of galaxy formation over time.

In 2009, Hubble observed the Ultra Deep Field in the infrared. Using the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, astronomers gathered one of the deepest core samples of our universe and captured some of the most distant galaxies ever observed.

Step 4: Use your time machine

Apart from their remarkable beauty and impressive imagery, deep field images are packed with information, offering astronomers a cosmic history lesson billions of years back in time within a single portrait. Since light from distant galaxies takes time to reach us, these images allow astronomers to travel through time and observe these galaxies as they appear at various stages in their development. By observing Hubble’s deep field images, we can begin to discover the questions we’ve yet to ask about our universe.

Credit: NASA, ESA, R. Bouwens and G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Hubble’s deep field images observe galaxies that emerged as far back as the big bang. This image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field showcases 28 of over 500 early galaxies from when the universe was less than one billion years old. The light from these galaxies represent different stages in their evolution as their light travels through space to reach us.

Step 5: Expand the cosmic frontier

Hubble’s deep fields have opened a window to a small portion of our vast universe, and future space missions will take this deep field legacy even further. With advancements in technologies and scientific instruments, we will soon have the ability to further uncover the unimaginable.

Slated for launch in late 2021, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will offer a new lens to our universe with its impressive infrared capabilities. Relying largely on the telescope’s mid-infrared instrument, Webb will further study portions of the Hubble deep field images in greater detail, pushing the boundaries of the cosmic frontier even further.

And there you have it, Hubble’s guide to unlocking the secrets of the cosmos! To this day, deep field images remain fundamental building blocks for studying galaxy formation and deepening not only our understanding of the universe, but our place within it as well.

Still curious about Hubble Deep Fields? Explore more and follow along on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram with #DeepFieldWeek!

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These Are The Oldest Footprints On Earth

Found on a prehistoric sea floor, the oldest footprints ever found were left between 551 million and 541 million years ago during the Ediacaran period. That is hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs.

The trackways tell scientists it was left by a bilaterian animal — that is, a creature with bilateral symmetry that has a head at one end, a back end at the other, and a symmetrical right and left side. Its paired appendages, scientists did not call them legs, were used to raise the animal off the sea floor as it moved.

From the invention of wireless to Radio Broadcast to Space

The word radio was coined in 1907 after a decade of furious activity to discover the mechanism for wireless transmission.  A decade earlier, French physicist Édouard Branly coined the term radioconductor to describe a means of wireless transmission.  He based his term on the verb radiate which ultimately came from the Latin word radius meaning the spoke of a wheel, a ray or beam of light.  The word radio was first used by itself in a 1907 article by Lee De Forest. It was used five years later by the Navy to distinguish it from other wireless technologies and entered common usage in the next decade.  Radio technology advanced so quickly that a little over 50 years later on November 16, 1974, scientists broadcast the first interstellar radio message out to the stars, a program that later became known as METI, the Message to Extra-terrestrial Intelligence. To date, only 9 messages have been transmitted by a variety of organizations:

{The Morse Message (1962)}

Arecibo message (1974)

Cosmic Call 1 (1999)

Teen Age Message (2001)

Cosmic Call 2 (2003)

Across the Universe (2008)

A Message From Earth (2008)

Hello From Earth (2009)

RuBisCo Stars (2009)

Wow! Reply (2012) 

The first radio message, known as the Morse Message, does not technically belong on this list as the Russians directed the message to Venus, and thus the primary mission was not Interstellar.  The message targets vary in distance from the very short (the majority of targets are under 100 light years away) to the very far, including the Arecibo Message, which targets the M13 globular cluster 24,000 light years away.  

While there have been some dissenting voices who argue that ‘revealing’ our location to enemy or hostile alien civilizations is ill-advised at best, most scientific consensus agrees that due to the physical restrictions on speed and travel (as currently understood) we are in no danger of imminent attack.  While the Arecibo Message won’t reach its target for another 25,000 years or so, the first of the other messages should arrive by 2029.  Other scientist point out that our current terrestrial radio and television broadcasts represent their own METI signal and thus we have no need to fund additional broad- or narrow-cast messages.  

Image of the Arecibo Radio Telescope courtesy Marius Strom under a Creative Commons 3.0 share alike license.  

Image of the Arecibo Message of 1679 bits in the public domain.  

The Milky Way over Snow-Capped Himalayas

Saturn and Dione - October 2 2011

NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Kevin M. Gill

Hubble Spots Flock of Cosmic Ducks by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Are Crows the Ultimate Problem Solvers? | Inside the Animal Mind | BBC Earth

Incredible view of Fanjingshan or mount Fanjing, Guizhou, China

Guizhou, China 😍✈️

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