New Hubble treasury project to survey first third of cosmic time
Mar 15, 2010 - 4:00:00 AM
|
|
|
We want to look very deep, very far back in time, and see what galaxies and black holes were doing back then, Faber said. It's important to observe in different regions, because the universe is very clumpy, and to have a large enough sample to count things, so we can see how many of one kind of object versus another kind there were at different times.
|
By University of California - Santa Cruz,
[RxPG] SANTA CRUZ, CA--Astronomers will peer deep into the universe in five directions to document the early history of star formation and galaxy evolution in an ambitious new project requiring an unprecedented amount of time on the Hubble Space Telescope.
By imaging more than 250,000 distant galaxies, the project will provide the first comprehensive view of the structure and assembly of galaxies over the first third of cosmic time. It will also yield crucial data on the earliest stages in the formation of supermassive black holes and find distant supernovae important for understanding dark energy and the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Project leader Sandra Faber of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the effort relies on Hubble's powerful new infrared camera, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), as well as the telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The proposal, which brings together a large international team of collaborators, was awarded a record 902 orbits of observing time as one of three large-scale projects chosen for the Hubble Multi-Cycle Treasury Program. The observing time, totaling about three and a half months, will be spread out over the next two to three years.
This is an effort to make the best use of Hubble while it is at the apex of its capabilities, providing major legacy data sets for the ages, said Faber, a University Professor and chair of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC.
The committee that reviewed proposals for the Hubble Multi-Cycle Treasury Program asked Faber to combine her initial proposal with a similar one led by Henry Ferguson, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which operates the Hubble telescope. Faber and Ferguson will work together to manage the project, which involves more than 100 investigators from dozens of institutions around the world.
A powerful telescope like Hubble allows astronomers to see back in time as it gathers light that has traveled for billions of years across the universe. The new survey is designed to observe galaxies at distances that correspond to look-back times from nearly 13 billion years ago (about 600,000 years after the Big Bang) up to about 9 billion years ago. Astronomers express these distances in terms of redshift (z), a measure of how the expansion of the universe shifts the light from an object to longer wavelengths. The redshift increases with distance, and this study will look at objects at distances from about z=1.5 to z=8.
We want to look very deep, very far back in time, and see what galaxies and black holes were doing back then, Faber said. It's important to observe in different regions, because the universe is very clumpy, and to have a large enough sample to count things, so we can see how many of one kind of object versus another kind there were at different times.
One of Faber's colleagues at UCSC, Garth Illingworth, recently demonstrated the power of Hubble's new camera when his team described the most distant galaxies ever detected (
Advertise in this space for $10 per month.
Contact us today.
|
 |
Related Latest Research News
|
|
Subscribe to Latest Research Newsletter
|
|
|
|
Feedback
|
For any corrections of factual information, to contact the editors or to send
any medical news or health news press releases, use
feedback form
|
Top of Page
|
