| Subject: Hubble near dawn of creation |
Author:
Betty
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Date Posted: 08:32:46 03/10/04 Wed
In reply to:
Betty
's message, "Hubble & Keck look back 13 billion years" on 09:47:40 02/21/04 Sat
EXPERTS SAY IMAGES WITHIN `STONE'S THROW' OF BIG BANG
By Dennis Overbye
New York Times
BALTIMORE - Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope say they have reached far enough out in space and back in time to be within ``a stone's throw'' of the big bang.
In a ceremony that was part science workshop, part political rally and part starting gun for an astronomical gold rush, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Johns Hopkins University campus unveiled what they said was the deepest telescopic view into the universe ever obtained.
Along with detecting roughly 10,000 galaxies, the million-second exposure of a small patch of dark sky in the constellation Fornax captured objects a quarter the brightness of previous surveys.
Several dozen faint reddish spots, the astronomers said, could even be infant galaxies just emerging from the ``dark ages'' that prevailed in the first half-billion years after the big bang when stars were just beginning to form.
``We might have seen the end of the beginning,'' said Anton Koekemoer of the institute, who was part of the project.
He and others cautioned, however, that more work will be required before astronomers know if their surmises are correct. Astronomers will not be able to take a deeper picture until the James Webb Space Telescope goes into orbit in 2011.
When the new image, known officially as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, has been studied, said Steven Beckwith, the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, ``we expect it to reveal new secrets to the origin of stars and galaxies, and ultimately ourselves.''
The first bits of that work began with a frenzy Tuesday morning, when the space telescope institute simultaneously unveiled the images and made the raw data available to the world at www.hubble site.org.
Before Tuesday morning, Beckwith said, only four people had seen the image and they had pledged among themselves not to work on it ahead of time, so as not to give the ``home team'' an advantage.
``I wanted it to be like the great land rush where the gun is fired and everybody takes off,'' said Beckwith, who devoted his discretionary budget toward the immense amount of telescope time needed for the project -- 800 separate exposures spread out over four months.
The occasion also served as a reminder of the plight of the Hubble telescope, which is operating under a death sentence.
Since 1990, it has floated above Earth's murky atmosphere, providing astronomers with peerless views of the heavens, with the help of periodic refurbishments by astronauts. But on Jan. 17, just one day after the Hubble had completed its marathon squint, NASA's administrator, Sean O'Keefe, said any further space shuttle missions to the telescope would be unsafe and canceled them, dooming Hubble to die in orbit within three years.
The decision caused an outcry among scientists, the public and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. In response to a protest by Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, home of the space telescope, O'Keefe agreed to get a ``second opinion'' from Harold Gehman, who led an investigation into the loss of the shuttle Columbia last year. His response is expected soon.
Last week, Rep. Mark Udall of Colorado and seven colleagues introduced a resolution in the House Science Committee calling on NASA to establish an independent panel to study the question.
The astronomers denied that Tuesday's event was timed to capitalize on the uproar over Hubble's fate -- but Mikulski walked in unannounced to the telescope institute Tuesday to applause, then helped pull the curtain to unveil the new picture. She said she would not stop her efforts to save Hubble after Gehman's opinion was delivered.
``The future of the Hubble,'' she said to another round of applause, ``should not be decided by one man in a NASA back room without a transparent process.''
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