Billions of years of galactic train wrecks revealed in the most detailed image ever made of the universe

Scientists have created a new family photo of the universe. Like the photos in your family album, this galactic history panorama contains ancient galaxies and babies, well-established worlds and, inevitably, an occasional train wreck.

The new image, released May 2, is known as the "Hubble Legacy Field". The image represents the most comprehensive view of the universe to date, bringing together over 7,500 observations of the Hubble Space Telescope in 16 years. The final composite image contains about 265,000 galaxies, many of which are so far that their light has taken billions of years to cross Hubble's gaze.

"This picture contains the entire story of the growth of galaxies in the universe, from childhood until they became" full-fledged adults, "says astronomer Garth Illingworth at the University of California in Santa Cruz. and principal investigator on the project, said in a statement.

The project to create this image began in 1995, when astronomers decided to focus Hubble's attention on a seemingly black space-like sweat for 10 consecutive days. Darkness, worlds have emerged. The resulting image – now called the "Hubble Deep Field" – revealed thousands of unseen galaxies, some of which shone with a light that dated back to the primitive universe. The study of distant galaxies like this one gives scientists a clue to the appearance of the cosmos when these lights blinked for the first time, billions of years ago.

Since then, Hubble has taken tens of thousands of hours of observation, all day, every day, for nearly three decades. (The telescope just celebrated its 29th birthday with this superb image of the Southern Crab Nebula.) Hubble researchers hope this new mosaic of exotic galaxies, combining the last 16 years, will inspire other astronomers to discover the secrets of the world. worlds, including the origins of galactic "train wrecks" – the mishmash of stars resulting from the collision of two or more young galaxies. (The Milky Way, for what it's worth, is probably one of those train wrecks.)

As detailed as this picture is, its depth of field could be exceeded by a decade. In the mid-2020s, NASA hopes to launch a new eye in the sky called the wide-field infrared survey telescope (WFIRST). If all goes as planned, each photo taken by WFIRST will capture 100 times the view of a typical Hubble image. Expect a new family photo of the universe, showing tens of millions of distant galaxies side by side.

Originally published on Science live.