Reporter: Hubble's newest and final Frontier Field image
shows us just how vast and crowded our universe is
when it looked at just a tiny portion of the sky.
So what is a galaxy and what kind of super power did Hubble use to
capture this new image?
We are joined by Jim Jeletic at NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center who's going to show us this new view.
Thanks for joining us.
Jim: Thanks for having me.
Reporter: So start by telling us, what is a galaxy
and can you show us what Hubble has seen?
Jim: Sure, well galaxies are these flat plates
that have lots of stars, like billions, sometimes trillions
of stars, gas, and dust and they're all kind of circling
around a central point.
And this 27th anniversary image shows you
two spiral galaxies, one edge on
on the left and one on the right.
The one on the right, which is the most face on would
take you 450,000 years to get from
one side to the other.
one side to the other, if you were traveling
at the speed of light.
The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second.
So that's why this image of just a small portion of
the sky is so incredible.
Look at all the galaxies there and
think about how big these things are.
You see all kinds, you see the spiral galaxies
like we saw before, you see those elliptical galaxies
which are those yellowish ones
that have older
stars in it.
And you even see galaxies collitions.
So it's incredible you can get so many galaxies in one
part of the sky and infact no matter
which direction you look in the sky
your going to see the same thing
which means there's probably about 2 trillion galaxies
in the universe or about as many
galaxies in the universe as there are fish in the sea.
So there are a lot of galaxies that need guarding.
Reporter: What superpower did Hubble use
to see these faint and distance galaxies
in the new image?
Jim: Well mother nature provides a
common magnifying glass capability
and it uses something called gravitational lensing.
Where if you put an object
of heavy mass and sprinkle in some dark matter
it will bend and warp space
in such that the light will be magnified
and brightened and warped around
that big object so you can see it.
So in this case here that
dragon type thing you see in the center of the screen
that's actually 5 images
of the same galaxy mirrored
right next to each other.
And then in this other case we're going to see
these really really small
faint red galaxies
that who's light it took
600 million years that it was born.
So we wouldn't be able to see
this without this gravitational lens capability.
So it really provides us new capability where by Hubble
can look into the magnifying glass of nature
and see even further into space then we would have been see otherwise.
Reporter: Now you mention dark matter
that sounds like something a villain might use.
How do missions like Hubble help us learn about
one of natures biggest secrets?
Jim: Well dark matter is this really exoctic stuff
and we don't know what it is
we can't see it because it doesn't give out
any light but it takes over 80%
of all the matter in the universe
What we can do is we can see effects that it has
do to its gravity and we can map those
effects and that's what you're seeing here with the blue
we're mapping where we believe the dark matter is
by how it distorts
the light from background galaxies
but we also then can take a look at
galaxies themselves because
dark matter is the glue that holds
galaxies together
and makes them spin the way they do
so if we study galaxies as well
hopefully we can learn a little bit more about
this dark matter and maybe someday even figure out
how we can detect it directly as opposed
to just by seeing it by its gravitational pull on other things.
Reporter: Now Hubble just celebrated
its 27th birthday, what's next for the
famous space telescope?
Jim: Well Hubble is at the peak of its scientific capability
and still has redundancy in all its critical systems
so we're really hopeful we can get it
to continue to make ground breaking observations
well into the next decade and that's
due to all of the servicing missions
and where the astronauts went up and they
worked on Hubble upgrading it and repair it.
But what we are really excited about is
the James Webb Space Telescope
and James Webb is going to see
the infered light, much further into the infered
part of the spectrum so
if you think looking at a visible light like the Sombrero galaxy
here the picture that Hubble took
it will be able to take a look at
infered light so we can see
these different objects in different
wavelengths and it tells us a lot more information
about it. So we're really excited
James Webb and it's due to launch at the end of 2018.
Reporter: Where can we see more of Hubble's
beautiful images like the new one you just released?
Jim: Well if you want images, if you want videos
if you want to see what are the biggest discoveries
Hubble's ever made, if you want to learn about
the telescope, you go to nasa.gov/hubble
or you can follow us on Twitter
@nasahubble