Hubble telescope and a unique image to locate rare galaxies in the universe

Publishing an international team of scientists The picture The largest near-infrared image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescopeallowing astronomers to map star-forming regions in the universe and learn how the oldest and most distant galaxies originated.

Call 3D-DASH, this high-resolution capture will allow researchers to find rare objects and targets for follow-up observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was recently launched during its mission. Both the image and the scientific study were presented in a preliminary version of the article that will be published in Astrophysical Journal This is already available in the digital magazine arXiv.

“Since its launch more than 30 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope has led a renaissance in studying how galaxies have changed over the past 10 billion years of the universe.said Lamia Mulla, Dunlap Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics Science at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study. “3D-DASH expands Hubble’s legacy in large-scale imaging so that we can begin to unravel the mysteries of galaxies beyond our own,” he added.

for the first time, 3D-DASH It provides researchers with a comprehensive near-infrared scan of the entire COSMOS field, One of the richest data fields for extragalactic studies outside the Milky Way. Because the longer, redder wavelength observed with Hubble, exceeds what is visible to the human eye, the near-infrared means astronomers can better see far past galaxies.

Astronomers also need to search a vast expanse of the sky to find rare things in the universe. Until now, this large image was only available from Earth and its resolution was low. Which is somewhat observable. 3D-DASH technology will help identify unique phenomena such as the most massive galaxies in the universe, highly active black holes and galaxies that are about to collide and merge into one. “I’m curious about monstrous galaxies, which are the largest in the universe and formed from the merging of other galaxies. How their structures grew and what drove the changes to their shape, asked Mola, who began working on the project in 2015 as a graduate student at Yale University. “It was difficult to study these very rare events using existing images, which motivated the design of this large survey,” he said.

To image a large portion of the sky, researchers have used a new technique with Hubble known as Drift and Shift (Dash). DASH creates an image eight times larger than the standard field of view of the Hubble telescope by taking multiple shots that are stitched together into a master mosaic.Similar to taking a panoramic photo on a smartphone. DASH also takes pictures faster than usual technology, taking eight images per Hubble orbit instead of one, and achieving in 250 hours what would have taken 2,000 previously.

“3D-DASH adds a new layer of unique observations in the field of COSMOS and is also a stepping stone for space studies in the next decade.“, says Evelina Momsheva, Head of Data Science at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and lead researcher on the study.It gives us a peek into future scientific discoveries and allows us to develop new techniques for analyzing these large data sets.3D-DASH technology covers a total area six times the size of the Moon in the sky as seen from Earth. This record will likely remain spared by Hubble’s successor, JWST, which is instead designed for close-up imaging to capture minute details of a small area. It’s the largest near-infrared image of the sky available to astronomers until the launch of the next generation of telescopes in the next decade, such as the Roman Nancy Grace and the Euclid Space Telescope.

Until then, both of them Professional astronomers as well as amateur stargazers can explore the sky using a Online interactive version of the 3D-DASH image It was created by Gabriel Brammer, Professor at the Center for Cosmic Dawn at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

The Hubble Space Telescope is an international collaborative project between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center operates the telescope in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Consortium of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, DC.

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