November 16, 2006 Space and the Hubble Telescope
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I've always meant to start some kind of "blog" thing or place to put thoughts and interesting things down. I guess this is the one that gets me to actually do it. It's too cool not to share. I really had no location to do so until now. Anyway... Here is the link for this entry: www.spacetelescope.org. That link takes you to their top 100 image area. It's beyond mind boggling to look at some of those and read the text that accompanies them. If you've never explored this much(I hadn't) be ready to be blown away. I'll start by saying that I'm no expert when it comes to space...far from it. I also realize when I type on here that I'm typing to a wide variety of knowledge out there. So, excuse me for being stupid as well as stating the obvious. I'm fairly sure that the majority of the stars one sees when they look up at night are in our own Milky Way Galaxy. This is important to understand to get the scope of the images on those pages. Galaxies hold the stars, an incredible amount of them. The universe holds the galaxies...an incredible amount of them. I guess it'd be fair to assume most stars have some sort of solar system like we do. So when you look up and see all those stars think how big our own galaxy must be. This Page states our Milk Way has 400 billion stars, plus or minus 200 billion. Most of these stars aren't even visible to us with the naked eye. That is how big a galaxy is and how much it contains. Imagine that, 200 BILLION stars at the low end guess. The vastness is so extreme all you see in the sky are stars in our own galaxy light years upon light years away. Ok here is an image of a galaxy from the Hubble Telescope HERE(right click and open in a new window). Now try to imagine the millions of stars in that spiral galaxy. It's a tricky perspective thing when you are looking at something so extremely large. Every little dot is a star in there, many you can't even make out. The brighter ones are star clusters or giant stars. Now if you slowly zoomed into there you'd find a situation like ours where you'd look out at the night sky and see just a few of the stars in that image and they would not be close to each other at all like they appear in the image. Just think of the possibilities of solar systems and what could be on each planet in just our own galazy of billions of stars. It is mind boggling. Then look at that galaxy and realize it too would have all the same possibilities, or more, or less. Got it down so far? It's about to get a lot crazier(at least for the non-space folks reading...this like I largely am). This next image and the info that goes with it in my mind is beyond comprehension. I mean it should be obvious there is a sick amount of possibilities in just our own Galaxy of billions of stars. That alone is hard to grasp. Take a look at this image HERE(right click and open in a new window). I've seen it several times now and it still makes me laugh with amazement. Every spot of light on there is a GALAXY...each containing alllllll those stars that galaxies hold(the crazy amount of stars, many of which may have many planets). When you see galaxies you are looking past our stars and seeing the galaxies containing their own stars. So if the view is like that all those have to be galaxies. Just look at the smaller spots that must be way out there and imagine what is beyond those that we can't see. This is a sick amount of galaxies. The page on the site says nearly 10,000 in that one image. Here is a link to that page: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/heic0406a.html. It says that is the deepest visible image of the cosmos. There are some larger version downloads for all these too if you really want to see them. What I found fun was to download that 16 meg file and look at it. It is the Publication Jpg on the right side of that page. Look around it and try to realize what is in each of those galaxies, all the insane amount of stars in each. I was blown away at this point already, then I read what exactly that image is. It says, "The Ultra Deep Field observations, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, represent a narrow, deep view of the cosmos. Peering into the Ultra Deep Field is like looking through a 2.5 metre-long soda straw." They pointed the thing at a dark location in our sky. The field of view is like looking through a 2.5 meter long soda straw!!!! That is like an 8 foot straw. What does that mean? If it was an inch long straw the amount of space in the sky that image would be, would be about the size of the end of a straw. That is crazy enough, but we're talking 2.5 meters long. The view at the end of that is like the tip of a pen held infront of your face looking up. So that big image with ALL those galaxies is only encompassing a pinpoint of the sky! Now try to imagine panning that long "straw" around the sky. If this doesn't make sense take your pointer finger and make a small cirlce by curling the tip of it down towards the inside bottom of the thumb. Just something small that you can look through. Hold it to your eye and look at the monitor, noting how much you can see of it. Now move it to the monitor and note how much less you see through the same hole. Now imagine that 8 foot long straw and just how small of a view you are talking. Another way to do that is to make or imagine a circle the size of a straw end on your 8 foot ceiling. Then lay on your back and look up at it. That shot of all those galaxies is only that much space in the sky. Crazy. With billions of stars in our own galaxy it seems like there'd be at least a fair chance of other life. It would seem more crazy that there wouldn't be. I mean hell we can find ice and traces of ice in our own solar system. Toss in a billion more, let alone hundreds of billions, and it just seems like an obvious possibility. And if that vastness of just our own galaxy of possibilities isn't enough we have all those many many more galaxies...and that's just what we can now see. I guess I just don't know how to look at this image http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/screen/heic0406a.jpg and realize what it is and not think there is a good chance at other life out there and possibly lots of it. It seems much easier to imagine there is a ton of other life than to think otherwise. Hell it almost seems believeable there could be life in every galaxy when you realize how much is in each. To view that image full of galaxies seems very interesting if you think of life in each one. I guess I can't say I've seen any other image or read any other thing that offers as much hope as that one image does when viewed with a completely open mind. Anyway, check out the other top 100: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/top100/ . If that's not enough click on view all. They have almost 2200 images on there right now. |
