Distant Universe

[Drone]

We have a new distance record holder. It's the newly discovered galaxy, named MACS0647-JD, as it was 420 million years after the Big Bang. Its light has travelled for 13.3 billion years to reach Earth, which corresponds to a redshift of approximately 11.

Just think about that, the light has been on the road for billions of years.

Yeah, that tiny dot. It's a baby galaxy. Very tiny.

The object is so small it may be in the first stages of galaxy formation, with analysis showing the galaxy is less than 600 ly across. For comparison the Milky Way is 150 000 ly across. The estimated mass of this baby galaxy is roughly equal to 100 million or a billion suns, or 0.1 - 1 % the mass of our Milky Way's stars.

Tiny and young.

Along the way, 8 billion years into its journey, the galaxy's light took a detour along multiple paths around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0647.7+7015. Due to the gravitational lensing, the team observed three magnified images of MACS0647-JD with Hubble. The cluster's gravity boosted the light from the faraway galaxy, making the images appear far brighter than they otherwise would, although they still appear as tiny dots in Hubble's portrait.

Thanks to gravitational lensing, otherwise they'd have never found it. I hope that James Webb Space Telescope (scheduled for launch in 2018) will shed more light on this

http://phys.org/news/2012-11-hubble-candidate-distant-universe.html

 

[micropage7]

Scientists may have glimpsed the most distant galaxy ever seen. The galaxy, known as MACS0647-JD, appeared as a tiny dot behind an enormous galactic cluster that lies between the Big and Little Dipper.

Scientists combined data from the Hubble space telescope with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to make the discovery. MACS0647-JD would have existed about 13.3 billion years ago, or roughly 420 million years after the Big Bang. This would place it around 200 million years earlier than previous candidates for most distance object ever spotted

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/distant-galaxy-hubble/

 

[Drone]

A galaxy cluster, MOO J2342.0+1301, 7.7 billion ly away has been discovered using infrared data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). It is hundreds of times more massive than our Milky Way.

Galaxy clusters from the first half of the universe are hard to find because they are so far away and because not very many had time to assemble by then. What's more, they are especially hard to see using visible-light telescopes: light that left these faraway structures in visible wavelengths has been stretched into longer, infrared wavelengths due to the expansion of space. WISE can hunt some of these rare colossal structures down because it scanned the whole sky in infrared light.

And they did it using the 16-inch (40 cm) telescope which ran out of its coolant Well done! It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it

"I had pretty much written off using WISE to find distant galaxy clusters because we had to reduce the telescope diameter to only 16 inches [40 centimeters] to stay within our cost guidelines, so I am thrilled that we can find them after all," said Peter Eisenhardt, the WISE project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. and an author of the new paper. "The longer exposures from AllWISE open the door wide to see the most massive structures forming in the distant universe."

http://phys.org/news/2012-12-telescope-spies-gigantic-galaxy-clusters.html

 

[HammerON]

Another thread I will sub to thanks to Drone

 

[Drone]

^You're welcome HammerON

Little bit old news (July 2011) but it's never late I guess. Very interesting read and indeed post-worthy.

European astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have spied a quasar at a record breaking distance across the cosmos. This one called ULAS J1120+0641 is powered by a supermassive black hole 2 billion times the mass of the Sun. It is shining at us from a distance of 12.9 billion light years away, that's just 770 million years after the birth of the universe. Although not the furthest actual object found, this furthest quasar does also rank as the brightest object so far discovered in the very early universe.

Science Daily

Astronomy Central

That's mesmerizing.

 

[Drone]

Quasar named GB 1428+4217 produced the most distant X-ray jet ever observed.
GB 1428 is located 12.4 billion ly from Earth. The researchers think the length of the jet in GB 1428 is at least 230,000 ly, or about twice the diameter of the entire Milky Way.

 

[Drone]

Astronomers have discovered the most distant supernova

The supernova, known as SN SCP-0401, is 10 billion ly from Earth, meaning it exploded just 3.7 billion years after the Big Bang.

It's a Type 1a supernova

Type 1a supernova is a dead white dwarf star that erupts in a titanic blast after borrowing enough material from a companion star to reach critical mass.

Type 1a supernovae all have relatively similar brightnesses, and astronomers thus use them to measure cosmic distances (the dimmer a Type 1a appears to be, the farther away it is from us).

This discovery should help astronomers better understand the nature of dark energy. Even though this supernova is so distant and faint (the equivalent of looking at a firefly from 5000 km away)

SPACE.com

 

[3870x2]

Everything in the universe is effected by gravity, now what if - hear me out on this - what if it isn't the big bang that is propelling us in that direction, but rather we are being pulled in by something that is so massive, that its gravity is pulling the universe as we know it to itself.

Deep shlt man.

 

[Drone]

Everything in the universe is effected by gravity, now what if - hear me out on this - what if it isn't the big bang that is propelling us in that direction, but rather we are being pulled in by something that is so massive, that its gravity is pulling the universe as we know it to itself.

What you've just said is exactly what brane cosmology is about It says that dark energy can be a gravitational pull exerted by neighboring brane (Universe) which leads to our Universe's expansion.

 

[3870x2]

What you've just said is exactly what brane cosmology is about It says that dark energy can be a gravitational pull exerted by neighboring brane (Universe) which leads to our Universe's expansion.

sigh, of course it has been thought of already

I like reading about these things though. I wish we could get a supernova closer than the one in 1604, but atleast 20 ly away. Apparently three go off per century in the Milky way, but I guess they are either too small, or too far away.

 

[Drone]

...but I guess they are either too small, or too far away.

Yeah unfortunately we (Solar system) located in "suburban" area of Milky Way, the least exciting place :'( Luckily there will be James Webb telescope which can observe areas never seen before. Without uber high technologies and space travel we won't see much.

 

[3870x2]

Yeah unfortunately we (Solar system) located in "suburban" area of Milky Way, the least exciting place :'( Luckily there will be James Webb telescope which can observe areas never seen before. Without uber high technologies and space travel we won't see much.

This telescope is one of the things I am most excited for. This telescope could reinvent the way we see space. Imagine the pictures we didn't have before the Hubble telescope.

 

[Drone]

Extremely rare triple quasar found.

The light from this rare triple quasar, called QQQ J1519+0627 has travelled 9 billion ly to reach us, which means the light was emitted when the universe was only a third of its current age.

Two members of the triplet are closer to each other than the third. This means that the system could have been formed by interaction between the two adjacent quasars, but was probably not triggered by interaction with the more-distant third quasar.

 

[Drone]

The most distant galaxy yet

This image from the Hubble Space Telescope CANDELS survey highlights z8_GND_5296 - the most distant galaxy in the universe. The galaxy’s red color alerted astronomers that it was likely extremely far away and, thus, seen at an early time after the Big Bang. A team of astronomers measured the exact distance using the Keck I telescope with the new MOSFIRE spectrograph. They found that this galaxy is seen at about 700 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was just 5% of its current age of 13.8 billion years.

Source

 

[HammerON]

Very cool

 

[Drone]

Astronomers have discovered two of the oldest brown dwarfs (WISE 0013+0634 and WISE 0833+0052) in the Galaxy. These ancient objects are moving at speeds of 100-200 km/s, much faster than normal stars and other brown dwarfs and are thought to have formed when the Galaxy was very young, more than 10 billion years ago. These oldest brown dwarfs have temperatures of 250-600 degrees Celsius. They lie in the Pisces and Hydra constellations respectively. The spectral signatures of these failed stars' light reflects their ancient atmospheres, which are almost entirely made up of hydrogen rather than having the more abundant heavier elements seen in younger stars.

Absolutely amazing discovery! And there are thought to be as many as 70 billion brown dwarfs in the Milky Way’s thin disk!!!

Images of WISE 0013+0634 & WISE 0833+0052 respectively.

 

[Drone]

Distant gravitationally lensed type 1a Supernova discovered. It's called PS1-10afx and located ~ 9 billion ly from Earth. It's just happened to be magnified 30 times by a well-placed cosmic lens (galaxy).

 

[4ghz]

The size of known universe is limited only by the light that have reached us, and the oldest light source is only a few hundred million years after the big bang. But really, how big is the actual universe? Since there is no real "center" of the universe, for all we know we're about 50 billion LY away from the center (ground zero) of the big bang?

Tying to think infinite universe is giving me headaches. I think I'll leave that to quantum computer. (and let it figure out what the universe was like before the big bang.)

 

[Drone]

New amazing computer simulation of cosmic web

 

[Drone]

The image of the center of the newly confirmed JKCS 041 galaxy cluster, located at a distance of 9.9 billion ly. The galaxies located in the cluster are circled. Blue circles show the few galaxies that continue to form new stars, while yellow circles show those that have already entered quiescence.

 

[Ahhzz]

It's almost depressing realizing how much of the known universe we'll never get to see, know about, understand, nor our children's children.... and beyond that, we may have screwed ourselves so badly that it won't matter....

 

[revin]

Awesome thread Drone !! Thanks for keeping us updated !

 

[Gilletter]

Ever think we're just a spec of dust on the eyelid of some creature that we are microscopic to? Like bacteria to our relative size...

 

[Drone]

Agree with everyone. Universe is amazing. Here's a nice article with Kip Thorne and some cool videos:

 

[Drone]