NASA’s Hubble Looks to the Final Frontier
Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2016, the TV series "Star Trek" has captured the public’s imagination with the signature phrase, "To boldly go where no one has gone before." NASA's Hubble Space Telescope doesn't "boldly go" deep into space, but it is "boldly peering" deeper into the universe than ever before to explore the warping of space and time and uncover some of the farthest objects ever seen.
When "Star Trek" was first broadcast in 1966, the largest telescopes on Earth could only see about halfway across the universe - the rest was uncharted territory. But Hubble's powerful vision has carried us into the true "final frontier."
This is epitomized in the latest Hubble image released today in time for the new motion picture "Star Trek Beyond." The Hubble image unveils a very cluttered-looking universe filled with galaxies near and far. Some are distorted like a funhouse mirror through a warping-of-space phenomenon first predicted by Einstein a century ago.
In the center of the image is the immense galaxy cluster Abell S1063, located 4 billion light-years away, and surrounded by magnified images of galaxies much farther.
Thanks to Hubble's exquisite sharpness, the photo unveils the effect of space warping due to gravity. The huge mass of the cluster distorts and magnifies the light from galaxies that lie far behind it due to an effect called gravitational lensing. This phenomenon allows Hubble to see galaxies that would otherwise be too small and faint to observe. This "warp field" makes it possible to get a peek at the very first generation of galaxies. Already, an infant galaxy has been found in the field, as it looked 1 billion years after the big bang.
For more information, please visit:
www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-s-hubble-looks-to-...
Credits: NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz (STScI)
NASA’s Hubble Looks to the Final Frontier
Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2016, the TV series "Star Trek" has captured the public’s imagination with the signature phrase, "To boldly go where no one has gone before." NASA's Hubble Space Telescope doesn't "boldly go" deep into space, but it is "boldly peering" deeper into the universe than ever before to explore the warping of space and time and uncover some of the farthest objects ever seen.
When "Star Trek" was first broadcast in 1966, the largest telescopes on Earth could only see about halfway across the universe - the rest was uncharted territory. But Hubble's powerful vision has carried us into the true "final frontier."
This is epitomized in the latest Hubble image released today in time for the new motion picture "Star Trek Beyond." The Hubble image unveils a very cluttered-looking universe filled with galaxies near and far. Some are distorted like a funhouse mirror through a warping-of-space phenomenon first predicted by Einstein a century ago.
In the center of the image is the immense galaxy cluster Abell S1063, located 4 billion light-years away, and surrounded by magnified images of galaxies much farther.
Thanks to Hubble's exquisite sharpness, the photo unveils the effect of space warping due to gravity. The huge mass of the cluster distorts and magnifies the light from galaxies that lie far behind it due to an effect called gravitational lensing. This phenomenon allows Hubble to see galaxies that would otherwise be too small and faint to observe. This "warp field" makes it possible to get a peek at the very first generation of galaxies. Already, an infant galaxy has been found in the field, as it looked 1 billion years after the big bang.
For more information, please visit:
www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-s-hubble-looks-to-...
Credits: NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz (STScI)