Sunday, January 12, 2014

Seeing the stars with new eyes

Five days ago some of the most beautiful views of the universe and the deepest-ever pictures of a cluster of galaxies were released. 



There are so many facts that make these images - and story - absolutely fascinating:

- It's the first "Frontier Fields" view from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which means that more are going to follow over the next 3 years. 

- They mark the deepest ever observations of a cluster of galaxies: the photos centered on Abel 2744 - nicknamed Pandora's Cluster - found 3.5 billion light-years away from Earth.

- Abel 2744 contains several hundred galaxies as they looked 3.5 billion years ago. It is a massive cluster: 400 trillion times the mass of our own Sun, a thousand times that of our entire galaxy. 

- The images also capture nearly 3,000 background galaxies as they looked over 12 billion years ago, not long after the Big Bang.

I spend hours reading and trying to absorb the information, amazed by the vastness and grandeur of a universe with countless trillions of stars which gives a much needed perspective and a sense of humbleness. 

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