Reporter: For 26 years the Hubble Space Telescope
continuing mission has
captured the attention of the world
with its all inspiring images of strange
new world and exotics galaxies
across our universe.
And Hubble as a new image
that literally takes us back to the very edge
of space and time and here to tell us more is
Dr. Padi Boyd at
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Thanks for joining us.
Padi: Happy to be here.
Reporter: So for more then a quarter century
Hubble has inspired generation of people around
the world with its views of the universe.
Can you show us this new Frontier Field image?
Padi: Absolutely, so just like
the Enterprise allowed Captain Kirk and his
crew to explore strange new worlds
in our galaxy the Hubble Space Telescope
right here around planet Earth
allows us to view the
most distant, furthest galaxies,
dimmest galaxies by using the
power of clusters of galaxies which
are hundreds of galaxies bound
to each other by gravity and combining that
with Hubble to get a very deep view of the
furthest edge of the universe.
Reporter: So this image is literally taking us back
back to the very edge of space and time.
How is this image helping us explore the final frontier?
Padi: Well because that
cluster in the front has so much
mass in it, it actually bends
light around it and
also magnifies it.
So general relativity, Einstein's theory, predicts
that mass would bend space and time.
This is basically, effectively a lens
and that means the galaxies that are
very far behind that massive cluster
can be magnified up to 10 or 20 times
their original size
and brightness. Meaning that we can now
for the first time be imaging furthest,
faintest galaxies and images like this.
Reporter: Now science fiction
like Star Trek has stretched
our imagination for 50 years.
The star ship Enterprise and its successors
explore hundred of strange new worlds,
how does Hubble compare seeking out
life in new civilizations?
Padi: One of the driving themes of NASA
science right now is seeking out life
and Hubble is able to contribute
to that project in so many ways
the exquisitely keen vision that
Hubble gives us allows us to peer
into these beautiful nebulae
regions of gas and dust where new stars
are being born these are stellar nurseries
and we peer in around those
stars we can see discs of gas and dust
forming planets and we can even look at planets around nearby stars.
This is a recent result
of a star only 40 light years away that has
2 transiting planets and Hubble can actually
look a the data when those stars are transiting
and so start to peel out
some details about the atmospheres of the planets.
Reporter: How’s Star Trek helped
us imagine many wonders out there in the final frontier,
what are some of he cool things
that Hubble has actually seen?
Padi: That’s a really hard question to answer because Hubble
has seen so many amazing things
over the years.
We can see galaxies colliding,
we now know that is very part of the evolution of galaxies,
we see super sonic jets
emanating from super massive
black holes at the core of galaxies
and we can actually take a core sample
of the universe as a whole and look
at tens of thousands of galaxies
at one time all the way back to when we think
the first galaxies formed more then
13 billion years ago.
Reporter: That’s pretty amazing stuff.
Where can we see more of Hubble amazing images?
Padi: You can find all this information and more
by visiting us at nasa.gov/hubble on the web
or if you want to follow us on Twitter
we are @NASA_Hubble.