Can ancient stars still be seen?
Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 7:36 am
so, what do you think? are these star afterglows real, or just random noise?Xinhua wrote:The cluster of so-called Population III stars was probably formed from dust and gas when the Universe was a mere infant of 100 million years old, Researchers reported on Thursday in Nature, the weekly British science journal.
Alexander Kashlinsky and colleagues at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, used a small infrared camera aboard the orbiting US telescope, the Spitzer, to distinguish between energy radiating from the Population III stars and radiation from other stars and galaxies.
But a minor error in removing foreground signals could lead to a "spurious result," warned Richard Ellis, an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Top image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of stars and galaxies in constellation Draco. Bottom image shows glow attributed to first stars in the universe after radiations from other stars and galaxies is removed. (Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech/A. Kashlinsky/GSFC)
