Holy Galaxies batman! Take a look at this picture :O

If you havent figured it out yet I am a huge nerd! Especially a astronomy nerd!

Well NASA just released a new hubble deep field photo called the eXteme Deep Field or XDF for short!

Here is the link to NASA's website with the article about it :

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hu...ience/xdf.html

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Hubble pointed at a tiny patch of southern sky in repeat visits (made over the past decade) for a total of 50 days, with a total exposure time of 2 million seconds. More than 2,000 images of the same field were taken with Hubble's two premier cameras: the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3, which extends Hubble's vision into near-infrared light.

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This tiny patch of sky is about 1/50th the size of the face of the moon as seen in one of the pictures in the linked article!

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The new full-color XDF image is even more sensitive, and contains about 5,500 galaxies even within its smaller field of view. The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see.

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Over 5,500 galaxies in a piece of sky thats 1/50th (ish) the size of the moon?! Imagine if they got a piece of sky 50 times larger then that! That would be approximately 275000 galaxies!

Just in that photo alone imagine 5500 galaxies with millions of solar systems like ours with billions of planets just like our own!


Here is another website with an article on it and download links for High-Res images :

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/arc...12/37/image/a/

I got the highest res image as my pc's background right now :P


It gets me all funny inside just thinking about it!

Oh space travel where art thou!

Atleast I have mah new telescope to use to see the wonders that lie out there.

This is AMAZING! Thanks so much for the share... AWESOME!

http://i.imgur.com/UmpOi.gif

Thanks,

By the way the name of your bumble bee is awesome. I am reading the song of fire and ice books right now. Just about to finish the first one.

I'm a huge nerd when it comes to thought processes about the universe. I work Reception, do filing throughout my day, but nobody knows exactly the kind of stuff that goes on through my head. Right now I'm on a quantum physics kick. Everything is so BIG and yet can be traced to reactions that go beyond our notice because they are so SMALL. That is fantastic to me.

Have you seen the video of 'The Known Universe'? Well worth a watch! It's on Youtube.

Shoot, I was just reading a calculation the other day. I'll have to go home and find it. But they took an estimate from this photo, calculated the area of the whole 'sky' surrounding us, estimated the amount of galaxies that would exist, estimated how many plants would exist therein based on known ones we have observed and factored in things such as average distance from the sun, average estimate on the possibility of water, etc etc.

In the end, it was something insane. The fact that people think we are the only life in the universe is just not feasible, given the huge amount of variables and opportunities for other systems like ours to exist.

Science is awesome. :banana:

Thats awesome Danielle!

I have been into astronomy since I was I was 3 I remember having my room decked out in those glow in the dark stars and planets. Then when I was 4 I got my first astronomy book.

I also usually spend my days thinking about the universe and whats in it and how I can perfect space travel and the ways around making a warp core able to warp from point A to B and what I could use to power it.

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The fact that people think we are the only life in the universe is just not feasible, given the huge amount of variables and opportunities for other systems like ours to exist.

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I agree 100%!

I have seen The Known Universe its awesome!


Have you seen the one show where Morgan Freeman narrates / hosts it. Through the wormhole I believe thats a good one too. Also he did a movie/documentary too on space but I forget its name.

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Originally Posted by Vasiliki

In the end, it was something insane. The fact that people think we are the only life in the universe is just not feasible, given the huge amount of variables and opportunities for other systems like ours to exist.

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x2

I don't even have to look at this photo to think about that, just looking at the sky and all of the stars (plus do it out in the middle of nowhere and there's even more stars then you ever thought existed if you grew up in a city).

It's really mind blowing when you do sit there and think about it. It makes you feel pretty insignificant in the scheme of things.

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Originally Posted by Vesper

x2

I don't even have to look at this photo to think about that, just looking at the sky and all of the stars (plus do it out in the middle of nowhere and there's even more stars then you ever thought existed if you grew up in a city).

It's really mind blowing when you do sit there and think about it. It makes you feel pretty insignificant in the scheme of things.

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Absolutely! I live just 3 hours away from one of the most beautiful Dark Sky Preserves (Jasper National Park) and we go out there just to stare at the sky. You can actually see the Milky Way. It's so gorgeous. And we're so far North that sometimes we get the Northern Lights going on too,

I actually have a few dates planned this fall to take my camera equipment out and try to get some long exposure shots. So excited. It's going to be an experiment for sure, but I can't wait to see what I can capture with my new lenses.

There's nothing like taking someone out of the city and bringing them camping with us. Late at night we'll let the fire die to just embers and lean back to star watch. Last trip we counted over 20 moving objects in the sky that were not planes, 7 shooting stars and some Northern Lights in just a 2 hour period. If they've never seen this stuff before, it's almost magical.

Gets me every time!

I love this kind of stuff. The best sky I saw was in Wadi Rum, hours away from any sort of artificial light or town. It looked somewhat like this, but more intense:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4002/...da7047a535.jpg

There's nothing like space to make you feel insignificant in this world. :P

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Originally Posted by CatandDiallo

I love this kind of stuff. The best sky I saw was in Wadi Rum, hours away from any sort of artificial light or town. It looked somewhat like this, but more intense:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4002/...da7047a535.jpg

There's nothing like space to make you feel insignificant in this world. :P

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Ohhhhh that picture makes me want to head out and bring my camera into the country tonight! Gorgeous.

I LOVE moments like those. Makes you feel both small, and so very very aware.

It was truly amazing. It was deep in the desert near Saudi Arabia, and there was just 0 civilization around. Just us, camping tent-less beneath a sky like that.

I almost pee'd my pants, I was not expecting anything that spectacular. It was incredible and I will never forget that sky.

Too bad I live in such a large city.