This will be cool: Scientists are going to use Hubble to take six more deep field images.
The Hubble Space Telescope’s iconic “Deep Field” photo wowed the world in 1996 by revealing a huge collection of galaxies hiding inside a patch of the sky that looked like nothing more than blank space. Now NASA plans to image six more “empty” bits of sky for a whole new set of deep fields that could revolutionize astronomy once again. …
Since the original photo’s release, Hubble looked even longer at the same spot to create the “Ultra Deep Field” in 2004 and then the “eXtreme Deep Field” in 2012. But the new effort, called Hubble Frontier Fields, will be the first to try a similar technique on some new areas of the heavens. These photos won’t go quite as deep as the Ultra Deep Field, but will represent some of the deepest images of the universe ever taken.
Though I repeatedly challenged them at press conferences, too many astronomers claimed in 1996 that the first Hubble Deep Field was representative of the heavens, something that seemed unlikely considering how little of the heavens this one image saw. These new deep fields will help confirm — or disprove — that claim.
“Likely to be representative” might have been a better way to put it. Assuming the piece of sky for the original deep field was chosen at random there’s no reason to suspect it to be any different from any other piece.
That being said the more data on the uniformity, or lack thereof, can only help advance our knowledge.
Actually there were astronomers who baldly claimed that the first Hubble Deep Field was representative of the entire sky. It was this arrogance that caused me to challenge them.
I’m glad you did, hopefully other scientists joined in as well. Science only works if we consistently challenge our assumptions.
When we finally find the end of the super universe make sure they update ALL their theories and predictions about how much matter is in the universe.
Every time they get better pictures of deeper and deeper objects they have to rethink half of what they supposedly know.
My theory is that the universe is not expanding at an ever greater rate of speed. Instead I propose that light just slows down over greater distances, thus imitating a red shift caused by increasing speeds.
I don’t know of any items in the universe that are blue shifted, and thus accelerating towards us. Just some items that are not as red shifted as others. But still red shifted.
I would think some of our local cluster of galaxies are blue shifted, but you make a great point.
Is Andromeda blue shifted enough? or would it show that light speed is slowing?
Amazing what you can find on the internet these days. Here’s a catalog of blue shifted galaxies:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/nph-allsky?ra_constraint=Unconstrained&ra_1=&ra_2=&dec_constraint=Unconstrained&dec_1=&dec_2=&glon_constraint=Unconstrained&glon_1=&glon_2=&glat_constraint=Unconstrained&glat_1=&glat_2=&z_constraint=Less+Than&z_value1=0&z_value2=&z_unit=km%2Fs&ot_include=ANY&ex_objtypes1=Clusters&ex_objtypes1=Supernovae&ex_objtypes1=QSO&ex_objtypes2=AbsLineSys&ex_objtypes2=GravLens&ex_objtypes2=Radio&ex_objtypes2=Infrared&ex_objtypes3=EmissnLine&ex_objtypes3=UVExcess&ex_objtypes3=Xray&ex_objtypes3=GammaRay&nmp_op=ANY&out_csys=Equatorial&out_equinox=B1950.0&obj_sort=RA+or+Longitude&zv_breaker=30000.0
Here’s some more detail on the speed of light slowing down:
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/accelerating.html
Thank you Patrick.
Now I just have to figure out exactly how to read the rest of the chart.
Like finding the Direction from center of universe and from us. Are they ahead of us or behind us? They should almost all be behind us.
Actually everything behind us should be falling behind, We should be accelerating ahead or away from them. And everything ahead of us should be accelerating away from us at an even greater speed.
Everything to the sides should be moving almost parallel to us, in relation to the center of the universe as the starting point.
The only items blue shifted and thus supposedly coming at us should be things thrown by gravity towards us from the sides.
Oh well, things to investigate.