Posted on 09/26/2012 7:22:19 PM PDT by lbryce
Like photographers assembling a portfolio of best shots, astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of mankind's deepest-ever view of the universe.
Called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photo was assembled by combining 10 years of NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a patch of sky at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The XDF is a small fraction of the angular diameter of the full moon.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is an image of a small area of space in the constellation Fornax, created using Hubble Space Telescope data from 2003 and 2004. By collecting faint light over many hours of observation, it revealed thousands of galaxies, both nearby and very distant, making it the deepest image of the universe ever taken at that time.
The new full-color XDF image is even more sensitive, and contains about 5,500 galaxies even within its smaller field of view. The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see.
“When we are young
Wandering the face of the earth,
Wondering what our dreams might be worth.
Learning that we’re only immortal
for a limited time.
RUSH, “Dreamline” 1991
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8hRJRTOFt0
Psalm 8 (NIV Bible)
1 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.
2 Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
5 You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
If I could just store the stuff in my garage with even just a small fraction of that efficiency, I'd be able to park something in there...
The really mind-blowing part is that compared to the immensity of His wonders yet unmeasured, He cares deeply about the relatively insignificant me.
That the Lord and Master, indeed, Creator of all that is, has not only the wherewithal but the desire to hear my humbled entreaties (and not just mine, but those of all who call upon Him) and respond in the tiny eyeblink of a human life defies mere words to express the awe I feel when I think about it.
We have (and have had) the energy and natural resources to develop the technology, to gain a foothold in space and further develop technology (using resources from out there), and go beyond...to a future only God can know.
Or we can sit on our keesters, downing brewskis and Big Gulps and junk food watching the 'big' game.
The coddled masses have spoken. We have spent trillions on the 'problems right here at home on Planet Earth', and they have grown accordingly.
Okay, humanity, break's over...
It's that, or back to the caves...
So long, and thanks for all the fish?
Toss in some cultural predilections for destruction (frequently coupled with the intense desire to dominate by any means) and it is a quick trip back to 'nasty, brutish, and short', scrounging the ruins for useful items.
“This magic day when super-science
Mingles with the bright stuff of dreams”
“Countdown” by RUSH
After watching a shuttle launch by invitation.
A great youtube of the song sinced to offical NASA footage of a launch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5vPrrnb6tw
I was thinking the same lyrics watching Curiosity land on Mars. Someday it will be a man.
Maybe my great grandchildren will get to go. (I had hoped to...)
We were there already! In 1969. Haven't you heard?
Neil Armstrong, first man on MARS (according to democrat rep Sheila Jackass Lee)...
On a visit to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2005, Jackson Lee made embarrassing news by asking if the Mars Pathfinder had taken an image of the flag planted there in 1969 by Neil Armstrong.[2]
Prior to the 110th Congress, Jackson Lee served on the House Science Committee and on the Subcommittee that oversees space policy and NASA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Jackson_Lee#Political_career
But it is remarkable that nature was put together in such a way that it is possible to learn so much about seemingly impossible-to-know things. Not that we're anywhere close to 'knowing' everything there is to know, as if that were even conceivable.
I’m with Fermi when it comes to other civilizations.
LOL!
After all these years on FR I find that somehow coffee and computer screens still don't mix too well.
Sorry about that.
Re: “Individual stars are not resolvable from other galaxies, except comparatively ‘nearby’ ones such as Andromeda
Make that: “cannot be seen” from other galaxies... (with spikes or not), as stars are unresolvable points of light
I know that there's a fininite number of grains of sand on earth. I have trouble fathoming "infinity" and when I look at the universe I can't see it not having a wall at the furthest reaches of it. Kinda like the universe being in a big box. But if there is a box then what's on the other side of the wall? Just "nothing", just empty black space where nothing exists?
Like I said, it's too hard to comprehend.....
Me thinks interstellar dust blocks radio transmissions, particularly metallic dust.
I believe the Universe is technically defined as the region where space and time exists. Space and time are continually being created as the universe grows/expands (now at an ever and ever faster, accelerating rate).
In other words, it’s far from clear whether it’s truly “infinite”.
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