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Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/S.A. Stanford (UC Davis/LLNL)
Astronomers take a peek through a NASA telescope and see how space was 9 billion years ago

From PhysOrg.com, astronomers have recently used the Spitzer Space Telescope at NASA to look at and document clusters of galaxies located over 9 billion light-years away. This is the first time these clusters, or any for that matter, have been seen farther than 7 billion light-years away, according to NASA.

To find the clusters, the team carefully sifted through Spitzer infrared pictures and ground-based catalogues; estimated rough distances based on the cluster galaxies' colors; and verified suspicions using a spectrograph instrument at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

The image to the right was compiled from data taken from the Spitzer Space telescope in infrared to show the distance of the different galaxies. In the article, Dr. Mark Brodwin gives a great "Where's Waldo?" analogy to explain how the telescope works.

"Spitzer is an excellent instrument for detecting very distant galaxy clusters because they stand out so brightly in the infrared," said co-investigator Dr. Mark Brodwin, also of JPL. "You can think of these distant galaxy cluster surveys as a game of 'Where's Waldo?' With an optical telescope you can spot 'Waldo,' or the distant galaxy clusters, by carefully searching for them amongst a sea of faint galaxies."

A light-year is the distance it takes light to travel over 1 calendar year which is approximately 5.8 trillion miles" or more specifically and in scientific notation, 5.87849981x1012 miles (9.4605284x1012 kilometers).

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Can't wait
By GGA1759 on 3/22/2006 8:46:14 PM , Rating: 2
Wait till they put a telescope on the surface of the moon. We will be able to see even further than anything we have up until now.




RE: Can't wait
By Wahsapa on 3/22/2006 8:54:23 PM , Rating: 1
wait till we have a telelscope orbiting pluto


RE: Can't wait
By gerf on 3/22/2006 8:58:17 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, but imagine how hard that would be.

The equipment is very sensitive, especially to being jarred in transition, to gravity when it gets there, and temperature when it's operating.

You have to throw that sucker up into space, which has its own risks, and gives all the components quite a few "Gs"

You have to communicate with it, and land it, on the moon, which isn't easy with a time delay and an unmanned lander.

The moon's surface is virtually unknown. You'd want to land on something that's both A.) Smooth (for the landing) and B.) Rigid (for stability of the telescope)

Where would you put it? You'll have to have it on the near-side of the moon, unless you have a satellite constantly relay data back to earh. If that's true, then you'll have the sun glaring at you quite a bit. And if the sun is on the other side of the moon, then you'd have this big bright Earth glaring at you (brighter than the Moon of course). Of course, the lack of atmosphere might help this. But you still will have to deal with the temperature changes and differences differently than Hubble, as you'll be in a fixed location.

/hasn't looked up info on such a project, is only imagining the difficulties involved with such a project.


RE: Can't wait
By masher2 (blog) on 3/22/2006 9:21:32 PM , Rating: 2
The dark side of the moon is an ideal spot for radio telescopes. You're shielded from the immense radio traffic of the earth, and you have the large stable base that a radio array requires.

Optical telescopes are more suited for orbital locations or (as in the case of NASA's upcoming JWST scope) at a Langrangian point.


RE: Can't wait
By filibusterman on 3/23/2006 1:16:37 AM , Rating: 2
The moon rotates like earth so, althought there technically is a dark side of the moon, it changes.


RE: Can't wait
By Cristaal12 on 3/23/2006 3:39:26 AM , Rating: 2
it does, but its rotational period is matched to its orbit so the dark side always stays dark.


RE: Can't wait
By MetaSyntacticVariable on 3/23/2006 4:47:26 AM , Rating: 2
I believe he was refering to 'dark' in the sense of not recieving electromagnetic radiation from the earth rather than the sun.

not very clear though


RE: Can't wait
By masher2 (blog) on 3/23/2006 8:59:26 AM , Rating: 2
Yes, the term "dark side of the moon" is a commonly used phrase with a very clear meaning. It's the side that continually faces away from us, due to a tidal lock between the moon and Earth. It is rather more correct to call it the "far side", but the commonly used term persists.



RE: Can't wait
By timmiser on 3/23/2006 12:55:50 PM , Rating: 2
No, the moon doesn't rotate like the earth. Here are some moon facts:

It takes one earth month to do one rotation on the moon.
The earth takes one day of course.

The same side of the moon always faces the earth.
The far side of the moon, which we can't see from the earth, does have night and day just like the side of the moon we see. (Their day lasts for 1/2 a month!)

When it is a full moon, it is in the middle of the day at the center of the moon that we can see. It will be another month until we see that again.



Billions of light-years in time?
By Stele on 3/22/2006 9:07:54 PM , Rating: 2
A light-year is a measure of distance - the distance travelled by light in a year. Therefore, by being able to spot galaxies 9 billion light years away, Spitzer is able to see 9 billion years, not light-years, into the past... :)




RE: Billions of light-years in time?
By Bruce 1337 on 3/22/2006 9:43:33 PM , Rating: 2
That's the first thing I thought, too. A light-year is a unit of distance, just like it says in the article, not time.


RE: Billions of light-years in time?
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 3/22/2006 10:01:13 PM , Rating: 5
I yelled at Sven pretty badly for this one.


By cgrecu77 on 3/22/2006 11:44:15 PM , Rating: 2
you shouldn't have ...


RE: Billions of light-years in time?
By cgrecu77 on 3/22/2006 11:43:57 PM , Rating: 2
actually not ... by being able to see something located at 9 billion light years away you actually see images that travelled 9 billion years,i.e. images taken 9 billion years ago ... When you look at the sun you actually see the sun as it was 8 minutes ago, for all you know the sun might not even exist by then ... :)


By masher2 (blog) on 3/23/2006 9:00:53 AM , Rating: 2
His point was that a light-year is a measure of length, not interval. So the phrase "seeing light-years back in time" is meaningless.


soon we'll max out
By cgrecu77 on 3/22/2006 11:54:56 PM , Rating: 2
also, since the universe is around 15-20 billion years old does it mean we're soon going to see the edge of the universe? :) Assuming that there is nothing there then we're probably not gonna see anything since there will be no radiation ... I guess ...




RE: soon we'll max out
By Clauzii on 3/23/2006 1:14:10 AM , Rating: 2
Maybe a great wall of light? Given that we can´t see faster than the speed of light, and that the Universe is expanding, there might be a lot of plasma kind of thing on the edge, if theres enough material there. IF we could look faster than light we might see nothing on the other side (no light!) - or everything...


RE: soon we'll max out
By Clauzii on 3/23/2006 1:15:56 AM , Rating: 2
..or there is probably no material - so we cannot "see" anything at all...


RE: soon we'll max out
By KashGarinn on 3/23/2006 5:45:16 AM , Rating: 2
The great wall of light already exists and is studied as the cosmic microwave background..

And we have no fear of hitting a wall, because the current diameter of the universe is measured as 156 billion light years, and it is still expanding.

It even doesn't expand linearly, so there have been evidence of such rapid expansions that light can't keep up, creating a dark wall (until light travels this new distance).

Theories regarding the outer limits of the universe are interesting, but we'll first have to understand what space truly is before we can understand what limits of space could be or mean..

K.


RE: soon we'll max out
By masher2 (blog) on 3/23/2006 9:06:50 AM , Rating: 2
> "The great wall of light already exists and is studied as the cosmic microwave background...

CMB is the remnant heat signature of the Big Bang, and not a portion of the initial wavefront. Could we ever see back far enough in time, we will almost certainly notice an effect wholly different than the CMB.

> "And we have no fear of hitting a wall, because the current diameter of the universe is measured as 156 billion light years"

Ah, but the current diameter is irrelevant. When we look 9 billion light-years away, we see the Universe as it was 9 billion years ago. It is the diameter at that point in time that concerns us.


RE: soon we'll max out
By UlricT on 3/23/2006 3:08:44 AM , Rating: 2
It won't be the edge of the universe... it will be the beginning of space/time (i.e., the big bang).


The Future?
By GhandiInstinct on 3/23/2006 1:31:28 AM , Rating: 1
Would it be possible to see the future with a telescope?




RE: The Future?
By mandeep on 3/23/2006 2:04:06 AM , Rating: 2
No.


RE: The Future?
By osalcido on 3/23/2006 2:44:54 AM , Rating: 2
i had tears from laughing so much at your post

thanks!


RE: The Future?
By drank12quartsstrohsbeer on 3/23/2006 12:58:47 PM , Rating: 2
No, silly. You need a MICROscope for that!


How far from the center of the univers are we??
By mircea on 3/23/2006 7:40:08 AM , Rating: 2
I'm have no knowledge in this but, have they calculated haow far from the center of the univers we are? IF the univers is 15 billion years old, then going back with the telescopes this way is only if we assume we are at the far edge of the univers. What's the speed of expansion? How far are we trully from the center? 9,10,13,15 billion years??? At the "Big Bang" was the expansion of the univers faster than the speed of light and then slowed down?. If not, then there are a lot of things scientist have to answer in relation to the age of the univers and the big bang.




By Madzombie on 3/23/2006 8:29:04 AM , Rating: 3
The truth is that there is no "centre" of the Universe. Every galaxy sees the universe expanding away from it. Galaxies that we see on the edge will think that we are on the edge (assuming the Milky Way existed 9 billion years ago). There are galaxies and matter beyond what we see as the "edge" of the Universe, but we will never be able to reach them, because to do so would involve going faster than light.


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