[Music Throughout]
In 2004, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope changed astronomy
forever when astronomers revealed the first ultra-deep field
image. Created with more than 270 hours
of observation over the course of a year, it is our farthest ever
visible-light image of the universe. This tiny window
revealed thousands of galaxies in a seemingly empty patch of sky.
We can’t see any farther in visible light
because the unrelenting expansion of space has stretched galaxies’
ultraviolet glow into red light. More distant
galaxies are mostly detectable in infrared.
That’s why, in 2009, Hubble captured an infrared
ultra-deep field image that probed even deeper into the same spot.
It remains one of the most distant images ever
made, and a key source of information about some of the universe’s
early history.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have infrared resolution
and capabilities similar to Hubble, but each image will cover
200 times the area of sky. A potential
Roman ultra-deep field could be far faster to capture, yet cover
hundreds of times as much of the early universe.
To further explore this potential, a team of researchers
has created a simulated ultra-deep field image.
The entire image contains about one square degree of sky,
or about 5 full moons. Even a single
Roman field of view contains a staggering number of distant galaxies,
each one filled with billions of stars.
This computer-generated
image represents the distribution of galaxies that researchers expect to find,
based on the existing Hubble observations. It will
help astronomers determine how best to conduct an actual Roman
ultra-deep field and anticipate the measurements and conclusions they might
be able to make. Because light travels
at a finite speed, distant images are also snapshots
earlier in time. Ultra-deep field images reveal a
time from about 200 million to 1 billion years after the
big bang. Roman’s image would be the largest
observation of its kind for this time period and could reveal
key features in the adolescent universe, including rare
‘infant’ galaxies that eventually evolve into mature galaxies
like our own Milky Way.
With Roman set to launch by 2027, this simulated
ultra-deep field image is just one example of the
fantastic results this upcoming mission could bring
by the end of the decade.
[NASA]