Latest news with #HubbleUltraDeepField
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Webb Telescope Drops Detailed, Interactive Map of Its Cosmic Corner
To the humble humans on the ground, the duties of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope can sometimes feel a little…otherworldly. Sure, the observatory drops some life-altering images of the cosmos now and then, but otherwise, the raw data it gathers isn't exactly accessible to the average person—even once it's literally made available to everyone via the internet. But Webb's latest gift helps put some of its work into perspective. Accompanying last week's 1.5TB trove of public Webb data is a new, interactive map of the telescope's slice of the universe, which it's spent hundreds of hours examining with its state-of-the-art scientific instruments. Published by COSMOS-Web, an international, NASA-backed astronomical survey, the map contains almost 800,000 galaxies and an untold number of stars. When you first open the map in your web browser, it doesn't look like much: The product of Webb's painstaking observations is squeezed into a small, tilted square of space. But zoom in, and the universe begins to unfold. It's nearly impossible to choose which shimmering galaxy to home in on first. What the COSMOS-Web interactive map looks like before you start to zoom in. Credit: COSMOS-Web/Adrianna Nine The map extends through roughly 98% of all cosmic time, or 13.5 billion of the universe's 13.8 billion years. That (and its mind-boggling quantity of galaxies) means Webb's map dwarfs Hubble's Ultra Deep Field, which stunned the world with nearly 10,000 imaged galaxies back in 2006. "Our goal was to construct this deep field of space on a physical scale that far exceeded anything that had been done before," said physicist and COSMOS co-lead Caitlin Casey. "If you had a printout of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field on a standard piece of paper, our image would be slightly larger than a 13-foot by 13-foot-wide mural, at the same depth. So it's really strikingly large." Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team Though Webb's map offers astronomers a wealth of information with which to answer age-old questions about the universe, it also poses its own questions. The current cosmological model doesn't accommodate Webb's proof that the universe produced "a billion solar masses of stars" in "only about 400 million years," Casey explained in a statement for the University of California, Santa Barbara. Now it's up to researchers to figure out how so much light spread throughout the cosmos so early—and potentially tweak their understanding of the universe along the way. That's one reason why COSMOS-Web made both the map and Webb's observational data available to the public. "A big part of this project is the democratization of science and making tools and data from the best telescopes accessible to the broader community," Casey said. "Because the best science is really done when everyone thinks about the same data set differently. It's not just for one group of people to figure out the mysteries."
USA Today
2 days ago
- Science
- USA Today
Check out this interactive map of the early universe, considered largest ever created
Check out this interactive map of the early universe, considered largest ever created An intricate astral tapestry, the map gives stargazers digital views of the ancient cosmos in unprecedented detail and breadth. A team of astronomers have put together the largest, most detailed map of the universe ever created – and you can explore it now. The interactive online map, created using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, details some 800,000 galaxies across a vast cosmic distance – which in astronomy amounts to peering back in time. In fact, some of the galaxies are so far away, they appear as they existed not long after the Big Bang. Depicting a section of the universe known as the COSMOS-Web field, the new map is far more expansive than even the iconic Hubble Ultra Deep Field, a view of 10,000 galaxies NASA released in 2004. Spanning nearly all of cosmic time, the new map has the potential to challenge existing notions of the infant universe, the astronomers who created it claimed in a press release. The best part? The interactive map is available for the public to use. See interactive map of the universe A team of international scientists who are part of the Cosmic Evolution Survey program (COSMOS) created and released the map of the universe Thursday, June 5. Compiled from more than 10,000 images of COSMOS-Web – the largest observing program of James Webb Space Telescope's first year in orbit – the map covers about three times as much space as the moon takes up when viewed from Earth. That makes it the largest contiguous image available from Webb, according to the Rochester Institute of Technology, whose Jeyhan Kartaltepe is a lead researcher on the project. An intricate astral tapestry, the map gives stargazers digital views of the ancient cosmos in unprecedented detail and breadth. Scrolling and zooming in can take users some 13.5 billion years back in time when the universe was in its infancy and stars, galaxies and black holes were still forming. 'If you had a printout of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field on a standard piece of paper, our image would be slightly larger than a 13-foot by 13-foot-wide mural, at the same depth," Caitlin Casey, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara and co-lead for the COSMOS project, said in a statement. "It's really strikingly large.' Explore the interactive map here. NASA's Webb telescope gathers data for online map Using its powerful resolution and infrared capabilities, the James Webb Space Telescope observed a region of space known as the COSMOS-web field, which scientists have been surveying for years. The raw data from the COSMOS field observations was made publicly available once it was collected by Webb, but that didn't mean it was easily accessible. That's why the COSMOS project spent two years creating the map from Webb's raw data to make it more digestible for amateur astronomers, researchers and even the general public. "In releasing the data to the public, the hope is that other astronomers from all over the world will use it to, among other things, further refine our understanding of how the early universe was populated and how everything evolved to the present day," according to a statement from UC Santa Barbara. What is the James Webb Space Telescope? The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched in 2021, far surpasses the abilities of the Hubble Space Telescope, launched 35 years ago in 1990. Orbiting the sun rather than Earth, the Webb is outfitted with a gold-coated mirror and powerful infrared instruments to observe the cosmos like no instrument before. Since reaching the cosmos, Webb has not only facilitated countless scientific breakthroughs in astrophysics, but it also has produced gorgeous images of planets and other celestial objects, including star-forming regions. In March, NASA also deployed into orbit its SPHEREx telescope to collect data on more than 450 million galaxies. Scientists say the SPHEREx observatory will be able to get a wider view of the galaxy – identifying objects of scientific interest that telescopes like Hubble and Webb can then study up close. SPHEREx became operational in May, constantly snapping images of the cosmos. Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
The Universe's Largest Map Has Arrived, And You Can Stargaze Like Never Before
After many hours of staring unblinking at a small patch of sky, JWST has given us the most detailed map ever obtained of a corner of the Universe. It's called the COSMOS-Web field, and if that sounds familiar, it's probably because an incredible image of it dropped just a month ago. That, however, was just a little taste of what has now come to pass. The full, interactive map and all the data have just dropped, a map that vastly outstrips the famous Hubble Ultra Deep Field's 10,000 galaxies. The new map contains nearly 800,000 galaxies – hopefully heralding in a new era of discovery in the deepest recesses of the Universe. "Our goal was to construct this deep field of space on a physical scale that far exceeded anything that had been done before," says physicist Caitlin Casey of the University of California Santa Barbara, who co-leads the COSMOS collaboration with Jeyhan Kartaltepe of the Rochester Institute of Technology. "If you had a printout of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field on a standard piece of paper, our image would be slightly larger than a 13-foot by 13-foot-wide mural, at the same depth. So it's really strikingly large." JWST is our best hope for understanding the Cosmic Dawn, the first billion or so years after the Big Bang, which took place around 13.8 billion years ago. This epoch of the Universe is extremely difficult to observe: it's very far away, and very faint. Because the Universe is expanding, the light that travels to us from greater distances is stretched into redder wavelengths. With its powerful resolution and infrared capabilities, JWST was designed for just these observations: finding the faint light from the dawn of time which informs us on the processes that gave rise to the Universe we see around us today. The COSMOS-Web image covers a patch of sky a little bigger than the area of 7.5 full Moons, and peers back as far as 13.5 billion years, right into the time when the opaque primordial fog that suffused the early Universe was beginning to clear. There, the researchers are looking not just for early galaxies, they're looking for an entire cosmic ecosystem – an interactive gravitational dance of objects bound by the cosmic web of dark matter that spans the entire Universe. JWST data collected to date indicates that even with Hubble data, we've barely scratched the surface of what lurks within the Cosmic Dawn. "The Big Bang happens and things take time to gravitationally collapse and form, and for stars to turn on. There's a timescale associated with that," Casey says. "And the big surprise is that with JWST, we see roughly ten times more galaxies than expected at these incredible distances. We're also seeing supermassive black holes that are not even visible with Hubble." This profusion of well-formed galaxies hasn't just surprised astronomers – it's given them a whopping great puzzle to solve. According to our current understanding of galaxy evolution, not enough time had elapsed since the Big Bang for them to have formed. Even one is a bit of a head-scratcher – but the numbers in which JWST is finding them just boggle the mind. With access to datasets free and available to everyone who wants to take a crack, however, we may get a few answers. "A big part of this project is the democratization of science and making tools and data from the best telescopes accessible to the broader community," Casey says. "The best science is really done when everyone thinks about the same data set differently. It's not just for one group of people to figure out the mysteries." Papers on the data have been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy & Astrophysics. Meanwhile, you can head over to the COSMOS-Web interactive website and muck about zooming through the Universe nearly all the way back to the beginning of time. Giant Jets Bigger Than The Milky Way Seen Shooting From Black Hole Humanity Has Just Glimpsed Part of The Sun We've Never Seen Before 'City-Killer' Asteroid Even More Likely to Hit The Moon in 2032
