"Galaxy History Revealed in This Colorful Hubble View"

[jayfish]

JANUARY 5, 2010: More than 12 billion years of cosmic history are shown in this unprecedented, panoramic, full-color view of thousands of galaxies in various stages of assembly. This image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, was made from mosaics taken in September and October 2009 with the newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and in 2004 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).

Hi-Rez versions are available http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/01/image/a/"> here. Amazing resolution from the new HST cameras. I wonder if we need to start rethinking the age of the Universe. Some of the galaxies look remarkably well formed for being only .6 - 1 Billion years old.

Enjoy!

Jay

FORMATTING EDIT

[JackintheGreen]

1. It's amazing what god was able to do in 6000 years!

:evilgrin:

[demosincebirth]

2. You know, I can never make heads or tails of a picture ...

of the universe like this. Its beyond me.

[jayfish]

4. ...And That's Only A Tiny Sliver Of The Sky.

Only 1/3 the diameter of the full moon (about .166 degrees). While not as aesthetically pleasing you can get a feel for this personally by taking a look at the Virgo Cluster through even a smallish telescope from a moderately dark site. I have a 6" (which is considered small) and I can sweep the cluster, stop the scope and there'll usually be at least one, if not multiple galaxies, in my field of view. The Universe is a spooky big.

Jay

[pokerfan]

7. and speaking of heads and tails

A dime held at arms' length in any direction covers about 100,000 galaxies.

[damntexdem]

5. Space, the final frontier.

And quite a frontier it is, too.

[StarfarerBill]

3. "Billions and billions..."

It's an endless marvel, isn't it? :wow:

[pokerfan]

6. k&r

I wonder if we need to start rethinking the age of the Universe.

Well, the cosmic background radiation (from when the universe was still hot plasma from the Big Bang) is still there and we can't see beyond/before that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo#t=12m15s">This talk by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_M._Krauss">Lawrence Krauss is about an hour in length but I've cued the video to the point where he talks about how cosmologists measure the age of the universe:

I also found this:

One key question that has puzzled astronomers for decades is: When did the first stars and galaxies form after the Big Bang occurred? The answer---very quickly! Astronomers Rennan Barkana (Tel Aviv University) and Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) have found the first direct evidence that galaxies as large as the Milky Way already had formed when the Universe was less than a billion years old.

"In some ways, it's surprising that such large galaxies formed so quickly. Most galaxies in the early Universe were only one-hundredth that size," said Loeb. "But our model, combined with observations by other researchers, provides clear evidence that massive galaxies existed within a relatively short time after the Big Bang."

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html

[jayfish]

8. Thanks For The Link.

I'll check it out tomorrow at lunch. Funny you should mention the CMB because I was thinking about just that a while after I posted. I was thinking; maybe the BB was really a series of medium bangs? Each creating a ripple (CMB) that pushed the previous bang's ejecta away from it's source faster than the speed of light. The space between each ripple a universe of it's own. I imagine if seen from afar the whole deal would look somewhat like a planetary nebula. This could be my own little theory of everything. Inflation, multiple universes, missing matter... There is a lot that could be explained here.



Jay

[jayfish]

9. I Thought A Little More About It And...

ripples on a pond is not a good analogy. It would be more like a inner tube inflating inside an inner tube, inflating inside other inner tubes. Our universe being the air filled space inside one of the tubes. The CMB could be considered to be the tube walls pressing against the next/ previous tube on the outside and preventing an observer on the inside from seeing past it. I dunno, it's just a thought.



Jay