Yet another step closer to the time it all bigbang ( pardon the joke....).
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1217/
I have a question though.....A question that has been on my mind evrey time I see a pixelated picture of a star, object or galaxy far far away.
How do astronomers know what they are looking at when - for instance - the link above shows a roughly 25x25 pixel picture ( the actual galaxy) consisting of mainly red, orange and yellow pixels is a galaxy ?
I understand that redshift determines distance and spectrometry can determine chemical composition etc.
I think I just answered my own question
.....
Just writing it down and thinking about it........
I guess that once you have determined the redshift and found that it is near the dawn of time, size by the amount of pixels wide it is in relation the resolution of the pic and through spectrometry, the composition similar to a galaxy with lotsa star formation.....
Am I on the right track?
On top of that, can you do spectrometry on a single pixel?
Love to know ( heheheh) in medium to medium well language......
Cheers
Bartman
spose I should have read the article a little more thorough....
"The team spent months systematically ruling out all other alternative explanations for the object’s identity before concluding that it is the distance record holder. This was important, as nearby objects (such as red stars, brown dwarfs and old or dusty galaxies) can mimic the appearance of an extremely distant galaxy and must be carefully excluded.
The area around the galaxy was observed by Hubble through 17 filters — spanning near-ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths — with the galaxy appearing only in the two reddest filters. This was consistent with a highly redshifted galaxy, but did not fully exclude other possibilities. Images of the galaxy at longer infrared wavelengths taken by Spitzer were more conclusive, however: if the object were intrinsically red, it would appear bright in these images. Instead, the galaxy was barely detected, if at all.
MACS0647-JD may be too far away for any current telescope to confirm the distance with spectroscopy
[3]. Nevertheless, all the evidence points towards the fledgling galaxy being the new distance record holder.
The galaxy will almost certainly be a prime target for the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018, which will be able to conduct spectroscopy to make a definitive measurement of its distance and study its properties in more detail."
However.......I am still eager to know if there is more to it.....
