“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.” –Robert Southey
You might think that, when it comes to finding the most distant objects in the Universe, all we need is a good telescope, to leave the shutter open, and wait. As we accumulate more and more photons, we’re bound to find the most distant, faint objects out there.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, R. Bouwens and G. Illingworth (UC, Santa Cruz).
It’s a nice thought, but it misses an important fact: the Universe is expanding! And with that expansion, the wavelength of the light we can see gets redshifted. Ultraviolet light winds up in the infrared, infrared light winds up in the microwave, and the most distant galaxies that are out there are invisible, even to Hubble.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, P. Oesch (Yale U.), for the CANDELS team, via http://ift.tt/1AChCSw.
So how far can Hubble actually take us, and what’s next? Here’s the fascinating answer!
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1GNPC0G
“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.” –Robert Southey
You might think that, when it comes to finding the most distant objects in the Universe, all we need is a good telescope, to leave the shutter open, and wait. As we accumulate more and more photons, we’re bound to find the most distant, faint objects out there.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, R. Bouwens and G. Illingworth (UC, Santa Cruz).
It’s a nice thought, but it misses an important fact: the Universe is expanding! And with that expansion, the wavelength of the light we can see gets redshifted. Ultraviolet light winds up in the infrared, infrared light winds up in the microwave, and the most distant galaxies that are out there are invisible, even to Hubble.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, P. Oesch (Yale U.), for the CANDELS team, via http://ift.tt/1AChCSw.
So how far can Hubble actually take us, and what’s next? Here’s the fascinating answer!
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1GNPC0G
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