LBL: Madly Mapping the Universe

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LBL: Madly Mapping the Universe

Post by bystander » Fri Feb 05, 2010 3:31 pm

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stori ... 03/madmap/
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories - 2010 Feb 03
It takes special software to map the universe from noisy data. Berkeley Lab scientists developed a code called MADmap to do just that for the cosmic microwave background, then posted it on the web for other interested sky mappers. Scientists probing the sky with the PACS instrument aboard the Herschel satellite have adapted MADmap to make spectacular images of the infrared universe.

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SD: Precursors of Life-Enabling Organic Molecules in Orion

Post by bystander » Thu Mar 04, 2010 6:45 pm

Precursors of Life-Enabling Organic Molecules in Orion Nebula Unveiled by Herschel Space Observatory
Science Daily - 2010 March 04
ESA's Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. This detailed spectrum -- obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI), one of Herschel's three innovative instruments -- demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space.

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ESA: Herschel finds a hole in space

Post by bystander » Tue May 11, 2010 1:55 pm

Herschel finds a hole in space
ESA Portal - 11 May 2010
ESA’s Herschel infrared space telescope has made an unexpected discovery: a hole in space. The hole has provided astronomers with a surprising glimpse into the end of the star-forming process.

Stars are born in dense clouds of dust and gas that can now be studied in unprecedented detail with Herschel. Although jets and winds of gas have been seen coming from young stars in the past, it has always been a mystery exactly how a star uses these to blow away its surroundings and emerge from its birth cloud. Now, for the first time, Herschel may be seeing an unexpected step in this process.
Image
Herschel finds a hole in space (ESA/HOPS Consortium)
NGC 1999 is the green tinged cloud towards the top of the image. The dark spot to the right was thought to be a cloud of dense dust and gas until Herschel looked at it. It is in fact a hole that has been blown in the side of NGC 1999 by the jets and winds of gas from the young stellar objects in this region of space.

This image combines Herschel PACS 70 and 160 micron data, and 1.6 and 2.2 micron data with the NEWFIRM camera on the Kitt Peak 4 meter.

Hier ist wahrhaftig ein Loch im Himmel - The NGC 1999 dark globule is not a globule - T. Stanke et al

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BA: A hole in space… no really, an actual hole!

Post by bystander » Tue May 11, 2010 5:01 pm

A hole in space… no really, an actual hole!
Bad Astronomy - 11 May 2010
Space is black. I mean, duh, right? But really, it’s black because it’s almost entirely empty, so even with stars scattered around, there’s nothing to light up.

But some parts of space are bright: clouds of gas can be lit up by nearby stars, making them glow. However, just to make things more fun, there can be thicker patches of dust mixed in that block the light from the stars and gas behind them. We see lots of those, they’re pretty common. But there’s yet another "however": that dust only blocks the visible light. In the infrared, that dust should itself glow because it’s warm.
Reflection Nebula NGC 1999 (Credit: NASA/Hubble Heritage (STSci))
NGC 1999 — seen here in a famous Hubble picture — has all these ingredients. It’s a thick region of gas and dust. Stars are being born in and around it, brightening it with their reflected light (as seen in the image; the star V380 Orionis on the left is lighting up the surrounding space junk) as well as warming it up and making it glow on its own. Even so, the oddly-shaped patch to the right was thought to be an unusually dense blob of dust, blocking the light from gas on the other side of it from us.

A lot of the time those dense spots are where stars are being born, and the only way to see them is in the infrared. So astronomers pointed the European space-based Herschel infrared observatory at it, fully expecting to see the whole thing glowing with perhaps a nascent star forming in the dark blob. But that’s not quite how it worked out…
NGC 1999: Truly a hole in space. (Credit: ESA/HOPS Consortium)
Here’s the Herschel image they got. See that green blob near the top? That’s the part you can see in the Hubble image. In fact, it looks an awful lot like the Hubble shot, with the star V380 Orionis on the left, lots of glowy stuff, and that dark spot just to the right of it…

Wait, what? That spot is still dark? In the far infrared? That can’t be right. Even if it were only a few degrees above absolute zero it should be glowing at least a little bit.

So the astronomers followed up with more observations from the ground, and found something astonishing: it really is a hole, an actual empty region in the middle of a dense cloud! That’s the exact opposite of what they expected. There’s no there there. What could have done this?
...

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JPL: Herschel finds a hole in space

Post by bystander » Tue May 11, 2010 5:58 pm

Herschel finds a hole in space
NASA JPL 2010-155 - 11 May 2010

Image
Big Hole Revealed in Infrared (ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/Univ. of Toledo)
The dark hole seen in the green cloud at the top of this image was likely carved out by multiple jets and blasts of radiation. The hole was originally thought to be a really dark cloud, but this new infrared picture from the Herschel space observatory and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory on Kitt Peak near Tucson, reveals that the dark spot is actually a gap in a "nest" of gas and dust containing fledgling stars.

An older picture of the hole captured in visible light by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is shown as an inset. At the time the picture was taken, astronomers thought the hole was a dark cloud. When Herschel looked in its direction to study nearby young stars, astronomers were surprised to see the cloud continued to look black, which shouldn't have been the case. Herschel's infrared eyes are designed to see into such clouds.

The glowing, green cloud around the hole is called NGC 1999. It contains a fairly bright star, called V38O Ori, which is heating up the dust and creating the bright greenish glow. V380 Ori is a triple star system - one of these three stars appears to have launched a jet that helped clear the hole, as well as other jets and stellar radiation.

The red, filamentary glow extending through the middle of the image is a cloud of cold, dense gas and dust -- the raw material from which new stars are forming. Three new, embryonic stars can bee seen as the triangle of orangish, yellow-white spots. Bipolar jets are visible streaming out of one of these stars in blue. The dark region below and to the right of the top orange-white star of the triangle is thought to be another hole carved by jets from the star. This possible hole is not yet lit up by a star, as is the case with the hole seen above it.

Shorter-wavelength infrared light captured by the "NEWFIRM" camera at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory is colored blue, while longer-wavelength infrared light seen by the photodetector array camera and spectrometer instrument on Herschel is green and red.

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Space: Hidden Galaxies Found Behind Cosmic Fog Veil

Post by bystander » Thu May 13, 2010 9:20 pm

Hidden Galaxies Found Behind Cosmic Fog Veil
Space.com - 13 May 2010
A swarm of distant galaxies hidden behind a pervasive veil of cosmic fog has been seen for the first time by telescope European infrared space telescope.

The newfound galaxies are the furthest and faintest yet spotted by the European Space Agency's Herschel infrared space telescope.

They appear to be very young in the Herschel view, just 16 percent of the age of the universe – which is about 13.7 billion years old, researchers said. Thousands of stars are forming in the galaxies every year, they added.
...
The far-infrared Herschel telescope is the first space observatory capable of resolving most of the distant blur of the universe's ubiquitous cosmic infrared background into individual galaxies. In all, Herschel uncovered about 1,100 previously unseen galaxies.

About 300 of the newfound galaxies were spotted in a patch of space previously observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in its Hubble Deep Field north survey. The remaining 800 were hidden behind the wall of infrared radiation in a region observed by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory in the Chandra Deep Field South survey.

Both regions were part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) that combines the talents of several space telescopes from Europe and the United States in orbit today.
Herschel reveals galaxies in the GOODS fields in a brand new light
ESA Herschel - 06 May 2010

ImageImage
GOODS-North (left) and GOODS-South (right) as viewed by PACS.
Credit: ESA/PACS Consortium/PEP Key Programme Consortium

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Re: ESA: Herschel finds a hole in space

Post by neufer » Sat May 15, 2010 6:26 pm

1) A man takes a barrel that weighs 20 pounds, and then puts something in it. It now weighs less than 20 pounds. What did he put in the barrel?

2) You come across a man digging a deep hole. "How deep is your hole" you ask. He replies "You'll have to guess but I can tell you that I'm 2 meters (200cm) tall". You then say "How much deeper are you going?" He answers, "I am half done. When the hole is done my head will be twice as far below ground as it is now above ground." How deep is the current hole in centimeters?

3) A frog fell into a hole that was 14 1/2 feet deep. He could jump 3 feet, but he slid back a foot each time he jumped. How many jumps does it take him to get out of the hole?

4) How much dirt is in a hole 6 feet long 4 feet deep and 2 feet wide?

5) If it takes 7 men, 7 days, to dig 7 holes, how long does it take 1 man to dig a half a hole?

6) What's full of holes but still holds water?
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Re: ESA: Herschel finds a hole in space

Post by owlice » Sat May 15, 2010 6:35 pm

A hole, 150cm, 7, none, a sponge
A closed mouth gathers no foot.

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Re: ESA: Herschel finds a hole in space

Post by neufer » Sat May 15, 2010 7:34 pm

owlice wrote:
A hole, 150cm, 7, none, a sponge
You missed one.
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Re: ESA: Herschel finds a hole in space

Post by bystander » Sat May 15, 2010 7:53 pm

You can't dig half a hole.

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Re: ESA: Herschel finds a hole in space

Post by owlice » Sat May 15, 2010 9:01 pm

neufer wrote:You missed one.
On purpose! Someone else should have fun, too, and I see that bystander did! 8-)
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UCI: Brightest galaxies tend to cluster in busiest parts

Post by bystander » Thu May 20, 2010 8:07 pm

Brightest galaxies tend to cluster in busiest parts of universe
UC Irvine - 20 May 2010
Early data from largest astronomical telescope analyzed by UCI team

For more than a decade, astronomers have been puzzled by bright galaxies in the distant universe that appear to be forming stars at phenomenal rates. What prompted the prolific star creation, they wondered. And what kind of spatial environment did these galaxies inhabit?

Now, using a super-sensitive camera/spectrometer on the Herschel Space Observatory, astronomers – including a UC Irvine team led by Asantha Cooray – have mapped the skies as they appeared 10 billion years ago.

The UCI scientists discovered that these glistening galaxies preferentially occupy regions of the universe containing more dark matter and that collisions probably caused the abundant star production.
...
The study will appear in a special issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics dedicated to the first scientific results from Herschel. The project will continue to collect images over larger areas of the sky in order to build up a more complete picture of how galaxies have evolved and interacted over the past 10 billion years.

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ScienceNews: Hershel unveils icy debris ringing sunlike star

Post by bystander » Fri May 21, 2010 4:25 am

Hershel telescope unveils icy debris ringing sunlike stars
Science News - 20 May 2010
A flying observatory has taken the first ultrasharp images of rings of cold debris around sunlike stars. The doughnut-shaped rings appear to be extrasolar analogues of the Kuiper belt, the outer solar system’s reservoir of comets and other frozen bodies.

The newly observed rings are either left over from the planet-making process or were generated when planets collided. Astronomers used the European Space Agency’s infrared Herschel Space Observatory, which sports the largest light-collecting mirror in space and is exquisitely sensitive to cold, sand-grain-sized dust, to photograph the belts.
...
Astronomers believe the solar system’s Kuiper belt formed several billion years ago, when some of the outer planets, then packed tightly together, were suddenly hurled into the path of existing planetary debris, pushing the debris outward and sculpting it into a ring-shaped reservoir. By comparing the many examples of Kuiper belts that Herschel is expected to find with the locations of massive outer planets around sunlike stars, astronomers may learn if a similarly violent story unfolded in other planetary systems.
Image
This portrait of a ring of debris around the sunlike star q1Eridani was taken at an infrared
wavelength of 160 micrometers by the Herschel Space Observatory. The ring is thought to
be similar to the solar system’s Kuiper belt, a frozen reservoir of comets. Red denotes the
strongest emission, blue the faintest. (Liseau et al./Astronomy & Astrophysics 2010)


Resolving the cold debris disc around a planet-hosting star:
PACS photometric imaging observations of q1 Eri (HD10647, HR506)
Cold dust around nearby stars (DUNES). First results:
A resolved exo-Kuiper belt around the solar-like star zeta^2 Ret
Kuiper Belts Around Nearby Stars

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STFC/UKSA: Bright galaxies like to stick together

Post by bystander » Wed May 26, 2010 2:03 pm

Bright galaxies like to stick together - 26 May 2010
Science & Technology Facilities Council, UK
United Kingdom Space Agency
Astronomers using the European Space Agency's Herschel telescope have discovered that the brightest galaxies tend to be in the busiest parts of the Universe. This crucial piece of information will enable theorists to fix up their theories of galaxy formation.

For over a decade, astronomers have been puzzled by some strange, bright galaxies in the distant Universe which appear to be forming stars at phenomenal rates, making them very hard to explain with conventional theories of galaxy formation. One important question has been the environments in which they are located, such as how close together they are. The Herschel Space Observatory, with its ability for very sensitive mapping over wide areas, has been able to see thousands of these galaxies and identify their location, showing for the first time that they are packed closely together in the centre of large galaxy clusters.

A project using the UK-led SPIRE instrument on board Herschel has been surveying large areas of the sky, currently totalling 15 square degrees – around 60 times the size of the Full Moon. The two regions mapped so far are in the constellations of Ursa Major and Draco, well away from the confusion of our own Galaxy. Galaxies which are brightest at Herschel’s far-infrared wavelengths are typically seen as they were around 10 billion years ago, the light having been travelling towards us since then.

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Galaxies Like Grains of Sand

Post by neufer » Thu May 27, 2010 4:04 pm

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/05/26/galaxies-like-grains-of-sand-in-new-herschel-image/#more-65141 wrote:
Galaxies Like Grains of Sand in New Herschel Image
Written by Nancy Atkinson May 26th, 2010

Image of the distant Universe as seen by Herschel’s SPIRE instrument
Image
Credit: ESA / SPIRE and HerMES consortia

<<Wow. Just wow. Each of the colored dots in this new image from the Herschel telescope is a galaxy containing billions of stars. These are distant luminous infrared galaxies, and appear as they did 10–12 billion years ago, packed together like grains of sand on a beach, forming large clusters of galaxies by the force of their mutual gravity.

“These amazing new results from Herschel are just a taste of things to come, as Herschel continues to unlock the secrets of the early stages of star birth and galaxy formation in our Universe," said Dr. David Parker, Director of Space Science and Exploration at the UK Space Agency.

The galaxies are color coded in blue, green, and red to represent the three wavebands used for Herschel’s observation. Those appearing in white have equal intensity in all three bands and are the ones forming the most stars. The galaxies shown in red are likely to be the most distant, appearing as they did around 12 billion years ago.

For more than a decade, astronomers have puzzled over strangely bright galaxies in the distant Universe. These luminous infrared galaxies appear to be creating stars at such phenomenal rates that they defy conventional theories of galaxy formation.

Now ESA’s Herschel infrared space observatory, with its ability for very sensitive mapping over wide areas, has seen thousands of these galaxies and pinpointed their locations, showing for the first time just how closely they are sardined together.

The mottled effect in the image gives away this clustering. All the indications are that these galaxies are busy crashing into one another, and forming large quantities of stars as a result of these violent encounters.
This image is part of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) Key Project, which studies the evolution of galaxies in the distant, ancient Universe. The project uses the SPIRE (Spectral and Photometric Imaging REceiver) instrument on Herschel and has been surveying large areas of the sky, currently totalling 15 square degrees, or around 60 times the apparent size of the Full Moon.

This particular image was taken in a region of space called the Lockman hole, which allows a clear line of sight out into the distant Universe. This ‘hole’ is located in the familiar northern constellation of Ursa Major, The Great Bear.

HerMES will continue to collect more images, over larger areas of the sky in order to build up a more complete picture of how galaxies have evolved and interacted over the past 12 billion years.>>
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Re: Galaxies Like Grains of Sand

Post by wonderboy » Tue Jun 01, 2010 12:11 pm

Is that a real image or one of those computer generated mumbo jumbo ones? if its real its pretty much amazing!


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Re: Galaxies Like Grains of Sand

Post by rstevenson » Tue Jun 01, 2010 7:36 pm

This will tell you what the SPIRE instrument does. Yes, it's a real image, but not one that could be taken by a regular camera.

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UKSA: Herschel reveals details of distant galaxies & quasars

Post by bystander » Fri Jul 02, 2010 5:52 pm

Herschel reveals details of distant galaxies and quasars
ESA Herschel Space Observatory - 01 July 2010
UK Space Agency - 01 July 2010
Amazing new data captured by ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory – carrying the largest mirror ever launched into space - have just been publicly released, allowing the World’s astronomers to share in the Herschel SPIRE instrument’s observations of distant galaxies. From its vantage point nearly 1.5 million km from Earth (1 million miles), the Herschel spacecraft has given astronomers new insights into the different types of galaxy in the distant Universe and will allow them to explore part of the Universe as it was some eleven billion years ago or just 3 billion years after the Big Bang.
...
The new data is part of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES), led by Professor Seb Oliver at the University of Sussex and Dr Jamie Bock at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The HerMES project is providing a view of the distant Universe at wavelengths which can only be observed from space. Because the SPIRE camera on board Herschel “sees” images in three sub-millimetre wavelength bands, or colours, which have hardly been used in astronomy until now, it shows a different aspect of galaxies, and is able to view cool objects previously invisible to astronomers. The appearance of an object in these three colours provides information on its temperature, distance and luminosity.

Some of the data being released focus on a massive cluster of galaxies called Abell 2218. At a distance of over 2 billion light years from Earth, the huge mass of the cluster warps the surrounding space, bending and magnifying light from background galaxies in a manner similar to light being magnified by a normal glass lens. Abell 2218 is famous for being one of the best known examples of this “gravitational lensing”. The effect, first predicted by Einstein in the early 20th century, means that the background galaxies are magnified, allowing a much clearer view of objects as they were over 11 billion years ago – less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang. Without the gravitational lensing these galaxies would be much fainter, and confused by the presence of the foreground galaxies, but this chance alignment provides the opportunity to explore a tiny part of the early Universe in much more detail. The Herschel observations of these distant galaxies tell astronomers how fast they were forming stars at these early times, and help to build up a picture of how galaxies have evolved over the course of billions of years.
[The figure at right] shows the Abell 2218 cluster as seen by the SPIRE instrument on Herschel, in relation to an iconic image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The three wavelength bands are first shown as individual red, green and blue images, and then combined into a colour image. The centre of the cluster is marked as a white cross-hair, and the bright yellow object just below is the lensed galaxy. Most of the other galaxies shown are much bluer, and are in the foreground cluster. The properties of the cluster are also of great interest to other astronomers, such as those using the Hubble Space Telescope. Observing at many wavelengths not only helps work out the precise effect of the lensing, but also shows the nature and behaviour of galaxies within large clusters.

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A&A: Special Feature: Herschel: the first science highlights

Post by bystander » Fri Jul 16, 2010 10:54 am

Herschel: the first science highlights
Astronomy and Astrophysics | 16 July 2010
This week, Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing a special feature devoted to the first science results obtained with Herschel, an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA. It includes 152 articles dealing with various subjects based on the first few months of science observing. A few papers describe the observatory and its instruments, and the rest are dedicated to observations of many astronomical targets from bodies in the Solar System to distant galaxies.

Table of contents of the special feature (free access)
Herschel Science Center

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The GOODS on Herschel

Post by neufer » Fri Jul 16, 2010 2:49 pm

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/07/16/boatload-of-herschel-science-papers-released/#more-68760 wrote:
Boatload of Herschel Science Papers Released
Written by Nancy Atkinson July 16th, 2010

<<Love to read science papers? Here's a batch that will keep you busy for a while. 152 papers were released this morning highlighting the Herschel telescope's first science results. Herschel is the only space observatory to cover a spectral range from the far infrared to sub-millimeter, so there's a wide range of objects and topics covered, including star formation, galaxy evolution, and cosmology.
Herschel has taken a look at the 'Great Observatory Origins Deep Survey' (GOODS), an area of the sky not blocked by foreground objects like stars in our own galaxy or other nearby galaxies, so this area is ideal for observing deep space. While many other telescopes have peered into this region, Herschel's SPIRE instrument has taken a look in submillimeter wavelengths. Each fuzzy blob is a very distant galaxy seen as they were three to ten billion years ago when star formation was very more widespread throughout the Universe.

The image is made from the three SPIRE bands,
with blue, green, and red, corresponding
to 250µm, 350µm, and 500µm, respectively=>

..................................................
Herschel has imaged a stellar nursery around 1000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila (the Eagle). This cloud, 65 light-years across, is so shrouded by dust that no infrared satellite has been able to see into it, until now. Embedded in the dusty filaments are 700 condensations of dust and gas that will eventually become stars. Astronomers estimate that about 100 are 'protostars', that is, celestial objects in the final stages of formation.

An observation the 'sword' in the constellation of Orion shows a star-forming region. A characteristic feature is the spectral richness: among the organic molecules identified in this spectrum are water, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, methanol, dimethyl ether, hydrogen cyanide, sulphur oxide, and sulphur dioxide. This spectrum is the first glimpse of the spectral richness of regions of star and planet formation.>>
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Re: A&A: Special Feature: Herschel: the first science highli

Post by Beyond » Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:39 am

So how come i can see a blue dot in the upper right side of the hole in the picture that Hubble took, but do not see anything in the picture that Herschel took?
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Re: A&A: Special Feature: Herschel: the first science highli

Post by bystander » Mon Jul 19, 2010 5:58 am

I think maybe you have that backwards.

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Re: A&A: Special Feature: Herschel: the first science highli

Post by Beyond » Tue Jul 20, 2010 6:52 am

Well----You were right bystander. I'll have to try and not use my computer while standing on my head anymore :mrgreen: . So that means that Herschel picked up something that was past the "Hole" that Hubble did not pick up in its visable mode. However, Hubble in its visable mode picked up 4 red strands from a star on the left side that Herschel did not, so i guess they're even - for now. Of course the "Hole" is not really a hole in space itself, but a clearing that happened when the usuall dust and stuff got blasted out of the way.
Although a "True" Hole in space might bring up some interesting questions, like could you actually see anything on the other side of it. Could photons actually pass through a real hole in space where there just is no space at all? Could a real hole in space actually happen in the first place??
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Re: A&A: Special Feature: Herschel: the first science highli

Post by bystander » Tue Jul 20, 2010 5:45 pm

I think Herschel picked up a star that was bright in infrared but dim in the visible wavelengths, so Hubble didn't see it.

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NHSC:Herschel's Hidden Talent: Digging Up Magnified Galaxies

Post by bystander » Mon Nov 08, 2010 10:07 pm

Herschel's Hidden Talent: Digging Up Magnified Galaxies
NASA Herschel Science Center | JPL-Caltech | 04 Nov 2010
It turns out the Herschel Space Observatory has a trick up its sleeve. The telescope, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions, has proven to be excellent at finding magnified, faraway galaxies. Like little kids probing patches of dirt for insects, astronomers can use these new cosmic magnifying lenses to study galaxies that are hidden in dust.
...
A cosmic magnifying lens occurs when a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies bends light from a more distant galaxy into a warped and magnified image. Sometimes, a galaxy is so warped that it appears as a ring -- an object known as an Einstein ring after Albert Einstein who first predicted the phenomenon, referred to as gravitational lensing. The effect is similar to what happens when you look through the bottom of a soda bottle or into a funhouse mirror.

These lenses are incredibly powerful tools for studying the properties of distant galaxies as well as the mysterious stuff -- dark matter and dark energy -- that makes up a whopping 96 percent of our universe.
...
Cooray and a host of international researchers made the initial discovery using Herschel. Launched in May 2009, this space mission is designed to see longer-wavelength light than that we see with our eyes -- light in the far-infrared and submillimeter portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Scanning Herschel images of thousands of galaxies, the researchers noticed five never-before-seen objects that jumped out as exceptionally bright.

At that time, the galaxies were suspected of being magnified by cosmic lenses, but careful and extensive follow-up observations were required. Numerous ground-based telescopes around the world participated in the campaign, including the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, and three telescopes in Hawaii: the W.M. Keck Observatory, the California Institute of Technology's Submillimeter Observatory, and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Submillimeter Array.

The results showed that all five of the bright galaxies were indeed being magnified by foreground galaxies. The galaxies are really far away -- they are being viewed at a time when the universe was only two to four billion years old, less than a third of its current age.
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The five galaxies are young and bursting with dusty, new stars. The dust is so thick, the galaxies cannot be seen at all with visible-light telescopes. Herschel can see the faint warmth of the dust, however, because it glows at far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths. Because the galaxies are being magnified, astronomers can now dig deeper into these dusty, exotic places and learn more about what makes them tick.
UCI, other scientists find new galaxies through cosmic alignment
University of California, Irvine | 04 Nov 2010
Herschel telescope proves surprisingly adept at detecting their deflected light

UC Irvine astronomers, along with scientists across the globe, are discovering hundreds of new galaxies through brighter galaxies in front of them that deflect their faint light back to the massive Herschel telescope. This effect, identified by Albert Einstein a century ago, is known as cosmic gravitational lensing.
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The Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA contributions, is the largest telescope in space and – to the surprise of astronomers worldwide – has proven adept at locating galactic lenses that reveal magnified galaxies. It’s capable of detecting longer-wavelength light than the human eye can – light in the far-infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is exactly the type emitted by galaxies lined up behind the ones in the foreground.
Close up on hidden galaxies with new cosmic zoom lenses
University of Nottingham, UK | 05 Nov 2010
Astronomers have discovered a new way of locating a natural phenomenon that acts like a zoom lens and allows astronomers to peer at galaxies in the distant and early Universe. These results are from the very first data taken as part of the “Herschel-ATLAS” project, the largest imaging survey conducted so far with the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory, and are published in the prestigious scientific journal Science.

The magnification allows astronomers to see galaxies otherwise hidden from us when the Universe was only a few billion years old. This provides key insights into how galaxies have changed over the history of the cosmos.
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A century ago Albert Einstein showed that gravity can cause light to bend. The effect is normally extremely small, and it is only when light passes close to a very massive object such as a galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars that the results become easily noticeable. When light from a very distant object passes a galaxy much closer to us, its path can be bent in such a way that the image of the distant galaxy is magnified and distorted. These alignment events are called “gravitational lenses” and many have been discovered over recent decades, mainly at visible and radio wavelengths.

As with a normal glass lens the alignment is crucial, requiring the position of the lens — in this case a galaxy — to be just right. This is very rare and astronomers have to rely on chance alignments, often involving sifting through large amounts of data from telescopes. Most methods of searching for gravitational lenses have a very poor success rate with fewer than one in 10 candidates typically being found to be real.

Herschel looks at far-infrared light, which is emitted not by stars, but by the gas and dust from which they form. Its panoramic imaging cameras have allowed astronomers to find examples of these lenses by scanning large areas of the sky in far-infrared and sub-millimetre light.
Space telescope spots 'invisible' galaxies
New Scientist | Space News | 04 Nov 2010
Five distant galaxies so choked with dust that they are completely invisible at optical wavelengths have been spotted at submillimetre wavelengths by the European Space Agency's Herschel telescope. Because the dust is generated by young stars, such galaxies could open a new window on the universe's most active star-formation period.

Observations of the galaxies' spectra suggest they are very distant, appearing as they were when the universe was just 2 to 4 billion years old, less than a third its present age. At that time, stars formed at roughly 100 times their current rate.

Young stars in the galaxies shed dust that blocked visible light from escaping into space. But they did heat up the dust, causing it to radiate at infrared wavelengths. This radiation was stretched to longer wavelengths as space itself expanded, and by the time it reached Earth – and Herschel – it was in the far-infrared and submillimetre range.
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Ground-based observatories then snapped pictures of the sky around Herschel's finds. In each image, a galaxy lying much closer to Earth appeared in the same region of the sky. That suggested that the gravity of the nearby galaxies had bent and magnified the light from the more distant, dusty galaxies.
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Because the lensed objects are magnified in size, they can be used to study how stars formed during this active period in the universe's history, Cooray says. They way their light has been bent can also be used to study the dark matter content of the galaxies responsible for the lensing.
Herschel Provides Gravitational Lens Bonanza
Universe Today | Astronomy / Cosmology | 04 Nov 2010
One of the predictions of Einstein’s predictions from general relativity was that gravity could distort space itself and potentially, act as a lens. This was spectacularly confirmed in 1919 when, during a solar eclipse, Arthur Eddington observed stars near the Sun were distorted from their predicted positions. In 1979, this effect was discovered at much further distances when astronomers found it to distort the image of a distant quasar, making one appear as two. Several other such cases have been discovered since then, but these instances of gravitational lensing have proven difficult to find. Searches for them have had a low success rate in which less than 10% of candidates are confirmed as gravitational lenses. But a new method using data from Herschel may help astronomers discover many more of these rare occurrences.

The Herschel telescope is one of the many space telescopes currently in use and explores the portion of the spectrum from the far infrared to the submillimeter regime. A portion of its mission is to produce a large survey of the sky resulting in the Herschel ATLAS project which will take deep images of over 550 square degrees of the sky.

While Herschel explores this portion of the electromagnetic spectrum in far greater detail than its predecessors, in many ways, there’s not much to see. Stars emit only very faintly in this range. The most promising targets are warm gas and dust which are better emitters, but also far more diffuse. But it’s this combination of facts that will allow Herschel to potentially discover new lenses with improved efficiency.

The reason is that, although galaxies lack strong emission in this regime in the modern universe, ancient galaxies gave off far more since during the first 4 billion years. During that time, many galaxies were dominated by dust being warmed by star formation. Yet due to their distance, they too should be faint… Unless a gravitational lens gets in the way. Thus, the majority of small, point-like sources in the ALTAS collection are likely to be lensed galaxies.
The Detection of a Population of Submillimeter-Bright, Strongly Lensed Galaxies - M Negrello et al

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