Astronomers publish the largest near-infrared image of the Hubble telescope – IT Pro – News

Nice development again! Keep up the work, NASA!

What I’m wondering about (and these guys are smarter than me, so they’ve actually turned that off):

How many “double” galaxies are in these images?
Because in theory there could be an image from 10 billion years ago and another version a little less than 1 billion years ago?
Or how does it work?

If there are duplicate systems in the image, it could be because for example they entered the telescope’s field of view several times while they were taking pictures. (For example, the day x telescope took pictures of a certain part and the day x telescope took pictures of an adjacent part with some overlap)

In your way, it would say that in theory we humans have suddenly made a 9 billion year jump between taking a picture of a billion-year-old galaxy, and taking a picture of the same galaxy that is now 10 billion years old. This is how ID works. Not.

We can’t see a galaxy “getting big” beyond the period in which we can observe it, so in 10 years we can observe the same system when it is 10 billion + 10 years old.

Think of it as two points on a very long ruler called “time”: you (we) are at a point, and the galaxy is at a point, very far apart. Both advance in time but the distance between them does not change (in fact it does change*, but not fast enough to “suddenly” perceive the same galaxy 9 billion years younger or older)

Therefore, our temporal position is roughly the same as that at the time of the observed system, and the position – or the age of that system in which we can observe it – is determined by the distance between us and the system (and some variables such as the gravitational lensing effect of massive objects between the observer and the observed object.)

It’s a little simplified and there’s more to it, but I like to use this analogy because it also shows in a clear way that time and space are intrinsically intertwined…

* The universe of course is not static, we have known for a long time, things also move relative to each other and to us, and this can be seen by the phenomenon of blue shift (approaching) or redshift (moving away from us). Depending on whether the object is approaching or far away, the frequency of the light that it reflects or radiates to the observer changes (dopple defect)

It is also about reading the “near infrared image” in the article title. They are often the most distant objects observable to us in the spectrum of invisible light, and since most of them still move away from us, they are therefore on the infrared side of this spectrum. That’s why they needed a special camera to photograph these things.

(No, I’m not an astronomer, but it’s kind of a hobby. †

[Reactie gewijzigd door YourMom op 8 juni 2022 16:49]