While there may  be some confirmation to do on the discovery , the candidate Galaxy named UDFj-39546284, is seen as it was just 480 million years after the Big Bang at a distance of 13.2 billion light years away. Current theory suggests we shouldn’t find any galaxies more than about 13.5 billion light years away. So going from 13.1 to 13.2 billion light years represents a significant step closer to that ultimate limit. The results were published online today in Nature.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, Garth Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Rychard Bouwens (University of California, Santa Cruz and Leiden University) and the HUDF09 Team.

NGC 4696 poses a question

To truly appreciate this picture you have to click to see the larger image. It represents an unusual shaped galaxy never before documented.  The galaxy is curling around itself like a question mark.

This picture was taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. It is NGC 4696, the largest galaxy in the Centaurus Cluster. NGC 4696 is an elliptical galaxy lacking the complex structure and active star formation of other elliptical galaxies.

Most likely formed by collisions between spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies experience a brief burst of star formation triggered as the interstellar dust and gas crash into each other, but which quickly leaves the young elliptical galaxies exhausted. With no more gas to form new stars from, the galaxies gradually grow older and fainter.

But NGC 4696 is more interesting than most elliptical galaxies.

The huge dust lane, around 30 000 light-years across, that sweeps across the face of the galaxy is one way in which it looks different from most other elliptical galaxies. Viewed at certain wavelengths, strange thin filaments of ionised hydrogen are visible within it. In this picture, these structures are visible as a subtle marbling effect across the galaxy’s bright centre.

Looking at NGC 4696 in the optical and near-infrared wavelengths seen by Hubble gives a beautiful and dramatic view of the galaxy. But in fact, much of its inner turmoil is still hidden from view in this picture. At the heart of the galaxy, a supermassive black hole is blowing out jets of matter at nearly the speed of light. When looked at in X-ray wavelengths, such as those visible from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, huge voids within the galaxy become visible, telltale signs of these jets’ enormous power.

The picture was created from images taken using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

AUGUST 10, 2010: A long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image shows a majestic face-on spiral galaxy located deep within the Coma Cluster of galaxies, which lies 320 million light-years away in the northern constellation Coma Berenices. The galaxy, known as NGC 4911, contains rich lanes of dust and gas near its center. These are silhouetted against glowing newborn star clusters and iridescent pink clouds of hydrogen, the existence of which indicates ongoing star formation. Hubble has also captured the outer spiral arms of NGC 4911, along with thousands of other galaxies of varying sizes. The high resolution of Hubble’s cameras, paired with considerably long exposures, made it possible to observe these faint details.

This natural-color Hubble image, which combines data obtained in 2006, 2007, and 2009 from the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys, required 28 hours of exposure time.

Source: Hubblesite.org

Galaxy Collision: Picture Source: NASA, Hubble Space Telescope

You can  get a much closer look using a zoomable image of the Antenna Galaxies at the NASA website. 

There is also a  cool simulation of what the Andromeda and Milky Way merge might actually look like.

I’ve heard about the amazing work done by NASA astronauts to repair and upgrade this amazing telescope and it looks like this story might help tell that tale. Should be worth a look!

Click on the image and see the larger image. Or better yet click here for a zoomable version. The sheer number of galaxies is incredible….It will blow you away. The faintest objects visible now are about one billion times fainter than the dimmest visible objects seen with the naked eye. Its truely astronomical!

Hubble Ultra Deep Field Infrared. Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory and the University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (UCO/Lick Observatory and Leiden University) and the HUDF09 Team

“Hubble has now re-visited the Ultra Deep Field which we first studied 5 years ago, taking infrared images which are more sensitive than anything obtained before,” said Dr. Daniel Stark, a postdoctoral researcher from Cambridge University. “We can now look even further back in time, identifying galaxies when the Universe was only 5 percent of its current age – within 1 billion years of the Big Bang.”

“The expansion of the Universe causes the light from very distant galaxies to appear more red, so having a new camera on Hubble which is very sensitive in the infrared means we can identify galaxies at much greater distances than previously possible,” said Stephen Wilkins, from Oxford University.

Want to know where in the sky this image is taken from? Look below. In the centre of the image is the HDUF cross-hair. That the “empty” piece of sky….

Where in the Sky the HUDF image was taken

Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Acknowledgment: M. Wong (STScI/UC Berkeley) and C. Go (Philippines)

“This picture was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on 24 February 2009, when Saturn was at a distance of roughly 1.25 billion kilometres from Earth. Hubble can see details as small as 300 kilometres across on Saturn. This close-up view of Saturn’s disc captures the transit of several moons across the face of the gas giant planet. The giant orange moon Titan — larger than the planet Mercury — can be seen at upper right. The white icy moons that are much closer to Saturn, hence much closer to the ring plane in this view, are, from left to right: Enceladus, Dione, and Mimas. The dark band running across the face of the planet slightly above the rings is the shadow of the rings cast on the planet.”

More images from http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/heic0911b.html

This is an incredible movie showing just how far hubble has gazed into the universe

Amazing as this picture was, Hubble once again looked at a single spot for approximately 11 days in 2006 with upgraded technology and saw some of the most distanct galaxies, possibly even some of the earliest forming galaxies in our universe….cool huh!