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PD0RDD > NASA 15.10.98 16:19l 125 Lines 5582 Bytes #-10040 (0) @ WW
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Onderwerp: HUBBLE GOES TO THE LIMIT IN SEARCH OF FARTHEST GALAXIES
Don Savage
Headquarters, Washington, DC October 8, 1998
(Phone: 202/358-1547)
Bill Steigerwald
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone: 301/286-5017)
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
(Phone: 410/338-4514)
RELEASE: 98-179
HUBBLE GOES TO THE LIMIT IN SEARCH OF FARTHEST GALAXIES
Stretching the vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
farther across space and further back into time than ever before,
astronomers have peered into a previously unseen realm of the
universe.
A "long exposure" infrared image taken with Hubble's Near
Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) has
uncovered the faintest galaxies ever seen.
Astronomers believe some of these galaxies could be over 12
billion light-years away (depending on cosmological models) Ð
making them the farthest objects ever seen. A powerful new
generation of telescopes will be needed to confirm the suspected
distances.
"NICMOS has parted the dark curtain that previously blocked
our view of very distant objects and revealed a whole new cast of
characters. We now have to study them to find out who, what and
where they are. We are still finding new frontiers," said Rodger
I. Thompson of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
"This is just our first tentative glimpse into the very
remote universe," said Alan Dressler of the Carnegie Observatories
in Pasadena, CA. "What we see may be the first stages of galaxy
formation. But the objects are so faint that their true nature
can only be explored with the advanced telescopes of the future."
"This observation is a major step toward fulfilling one of
Hubble's key objectives: to search for the faintest and farthest
objects in the universe," added Ed Weiler, NASA's acting Associate
Administrator for Space Science.
In a separate discovery, Thompson also found that faint red
galaxies matched up with compact blue knots of light seen in the
earlier visible light image. "This means that some objects that
appeared to be separate galaxies in the optical image are really
hot star-forming regions in much larger older galaxies," he said.
Prior to the NICMOS observation, a ten-day long exposure
called the Hubble Deep Field was Space Telescope's benchmark for
the "deepest" view into the universe (with the exception of the
cosmic microwave background that is farther away than any
structures seen in the universe).
Astronomers had to wait for the infrared camera to be
installed on Hubble to look for unseen galaxies beyond the limits
of the visible deep field photograph. Infrared sensitivity was
needed because the expansion of the universe is expected to
stretch the light of distant galaxies down to infrared
wavelengths.
Thompson selected a portion of the original Hubble deep
field and took long exposures with Hubble's near infrared camera.
When the infrared and visible-light pictures were compared,
Thompson found many new objects that were not seen in visible
light.
In results to be published in the Astronomical Journal,
Thompson precisely measured the infrared "colors" of the objects.
He found some objects that had the expected color of a galaxy too
distant to be detected in Hubble's optical deep field image.
Scheduled for launch in the year 2007, the Next Generation
Space Telescope will take infrared spectra of candidate galaxies
to confirm their distances, and its higher resolution will help
reveal the shapes of these early objects.
The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the
Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA)
for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of
international cooperation between NASA and the European Space
Agency.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Images and photo captions associated with this
release are available on the Internet at:
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/1998/32 or via links in
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/latest.html or
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictureshtml
GIF and JPEG images are available via anonymous ftp to
oposite.stsci.edu
in /pubinfo/gif/9832.gif and /pubinfo/jpeg/9832.jpg
Higher resolution digital versions (300 dpi JPEG) of the release
photos are available at: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/1998/32
TIFF files are available at:
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/tiff/1998/9832.tif
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