NASA to make announcement

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

NASA is to make 'another' announcement later today
(1pm US time).

Apparently it is something discovered by Hubble Telescope.

Dr Michio Kaku is guessing that is might be the most distant star ever imaged in the Universe
or an image of the beginning of the Universe.

Hmmmmm.

No doubt it will be something we can't see with our scopes AGAIN!

[MLyons (Martin)]

Hope it's not a dude with a long grey beard

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Damn, why can't they make these announcements when it's early morning, not at 1pm when I am at work....

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by Astroman

Damn, why can't they make these announcements when it's early morning, not at 1pm when I am at work....

Actually, 1pm EST in the US is 4am in the morning here, or 3:30am in SA.

And who knows what the announcement will be.....

It'll probably be an anticlimax anyway....most people get up their hopes with these NASA announcements hoping it's something really big, but then they turn out rather mundane.

[astroron (Ron)]

They have found a galaxy thirteen point two Billion years old .
the Oldest/youngest galaxy ever found
Just announced on ABC radio news

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by astroron

They have found a galaxy thirteen point two Billion years old .
the Oldest/youngest galaxy ever found

See, if it was that, it's rather mundane. They were expecting that and it's nothing really new. Just an incremental push further back. It'd take them the best part of a year to confirm it, so even the observation was old hat

Now, what would be BIG news is if they had been looking at Alpha Centauri and actually found an Earth-like planet there and took piccies of it, as a follow up to the observations that are being made of the system by Greg Laughlin and associates.

[erick (Eric)]

This galaxy is 13.2 billion years old!

All together now :- "Happy Birthday to you,....."


Sorry, an old Goon Show line:-

"Crun: What? Bannister: This skull is 5 million years old!

Crun and Bannister: [Sings] Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you."



From the release:- "This observation was made with the Wide Field Camera 3 starting just a few months after it was installed in the observatory in May 2009, during the last NASA space shuttle servicing mission to Hubble. After more than a year of detailed observations and analysis, the object was positively identified in the camera's Hubble Ultra Deep Field-Infrared data taken in the late summers of 2009 and 2010."

Hail to the last successful servicing mission!

Pic here:- http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hu...st-galaxy.html

[renormalised (Carl)]

Well....it was that galaxy

[CraigS]

Lets not trivialise this announcement.

Given that the prediction is that we won't see any galaxies more than about 13.5 billion light years away, and that previously, the most recently known, most distant galaxy was 13.1 Blyrs, (z=8), 13.2 Blyrs, (z=10.3), represents a big jump closer to the limit.

The discovery also used the 'dropout technique', which is very elegant and simplistic as it uses successive filters to determine the distance.

The brightness also tells us how many stars were forming there, so comparing the last known one to the present observation tells us a lot about how the Universe was changing over that timespan.

When the James Webb scope gets underway, we should see more galaxies at this distance, which will also tell us how prolific star building was way back then … which should also tell us more about how accurate/inaccurate galaxy formation theory, presently is.

(All pretty cool, from my perspective).

Cheers

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

That one is a bit red, could be the telltale signs of it infancy. I do have a question relating to these discoveries and the age of them but will leave that to another post. Just need to locate some data on red-shift (or try to).

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Lets not trivialise this announcement.

Given that the prediction is that we won't see any galaxies more than about 13.5 billion light years away, and that previously, the most recently known, most distant galaxy was 13.1 Blyrs, (z=8), 13.2 Blyrs, (z=10.3), represents a big jump closer to the limit.

The discovery also used the 'dropout technique', which is very elegant and simplistic as it uses successive filters to determine the distance.

The brightness also tells us how many stars were forming there, so comparing the last known one to the present observation tells us a lot about how the Universe was changing over that timespan.

When the James Webb scope gets underway, we should see more galaxies at this distance, which will also tell us how prolific star building was way back then … which should also tell us more about how accurate/inaccurate galaxy formation theory, presently is.

(All pretty cool, from my perspective).

Cheers

Nothing trivial about it, but still mundane. Nothing more than an incremental step further along our quest to become even more uncertain about how things started

As they say, the more you learn, the less you actually really know

You have to remember Craig, they make predictions about how things are meant to be and just about every time they take a look, their predictions are either wrong or in need of substantial revision. It's the nature of the beast.

Predictions are only as good as what they believe they think they know.

What would happen if they detected photons from an object with a light travel time of 16 billion light years. That would throw all their theories and calculation right out the window. Now, that would be interesting.

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by renormalised

What would happen if they detected photons from an object with a light travel time of 16 billion light years. That would throw all their theories and calculation right out the window. Now, that would be interesting.

Well, I can't support it, but I'd like to think that the 13.5 B yrs will bite the dust in the not-too-distant future, as newer detection technologies come into existence.

I don't know that they'd 'throw all their theories right out the window, though'.


Cheers

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Well, I can't support it, but I'd like to think that the 13.5 B yrs will bite the dust in the not-too-distant future, as newer detection technologies come into existence.

I don't know that they'd 'throw all their theories right out the window, though'.


Cheers

Problem is they've hung their hats on the age of the universe being 13.7 billion years (give or take a bit) and having something turn up considerably older would throw a rather large wrench into the works, especially if it's coming from an object which clearly must be part of this universe. That's why they had to do all the jiggery pokery with adjusting the ages of stars (in globs) and the Hubble constant to get the ages of those stars to match their observation of the universe's age. You can't have stars older than the object in which they reside!!!!.

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

James Webb may reveal Galaxies even further off in the dark regions of this image.

Can you imagine an image like this Galaxy-splattered Ultra wide field found in one of those dark empty spots in the Ultra image.
I can.

And before anyone goes on about how far Galaxies can only be seen or that nothing will be in the image, remember they were all shocked when they saw what appeared in the Ultra image.
It was new territory that they did not think could exist.

We wait with patience Mr James Webb.

[OzRob (Rob)]

I am listening to the news on Triple J. They reported that astronauts discovered the galaxy using the HST and that the galaxy formed 480 billion years after the big bang...lol

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Originally Posted by OzRob

I am listening to the news on Triple J. They reported that astronauts discovered the galaxy using the HST and that the galaxy formed 480 billion years after the big bang...lol

What else would you expect from Triple J . . . man