Wednesday 6 January 2010

Photo of the Universe Furthest Back in Time


The Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of the universe just 600 to 800 million years after the Big Bang.
The photo, which combines an August 2009 infrared image with an optical image taken in 2004, reveals galaxies never seen before.
The newly identified galaxies are invisible in the visible part of the light spectrum, but stand out clearly in the infrared images.
Scientists, who released the photo at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Tuesday, said the nearest galaxy in the image was an estimated one billion light years away.
The furthest - faint red specks seen in the image - were 13 billion light years away, meaning their light left them just 600 to 800 million years after the Big Bang.
The scientists said the photo was the most complete picture of the early universe so far and not only showed galaxies with stars that were already hundreds of millions of years old, but also the unmistakable primordial signs of the first cluster of stars.

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