Photos from open sources New research, conducted using the Spitzer space telescope at NASA, offers to plunge into the deep and uncharted waters of our of space.
During one of the longest missions involving a telescope astronomers began a three-month expedition to catch the dull galaxies billions of light years from us. The results are already giving interesting food for thought.
“If you think of our research as a fishery for galaxies in the cosmic sea, then we find more large fish in deep water than previously expected, ”says Charles Steinhardt of the Center Infrared Processing and Analysis (IPAC) in California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Steinhardt is leading the author of a new study that was published in a journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The first results of the international SPLASH project are based on previous data identified by Spitzer and other telescopes, which showed that young galaxies of the universe are more massive than expected. The project has revealed hundreds of giant galaxies, 100 times the mass of our Milky Way that were born in the time when our universe was less than a billion years old (now the age of the universe is estimated at 13.8 billion years).
Conclusions cast doubt on modern patterns of formation galaxies that can hardly explain how such remote and young galaxies became giant so quickly.
“The galaxies gathered faster than we thought, and we see it only during projects like SPLASH, “says Peter Kapak, chief Researcher SPLASH.
Photos from open sources
Although astronomers have already seen such massive galaxies before, SPLASH is unique in that it has found many of these. Now when Spitzer is in the “warm” phase of his mission, he devotes his time for long-term projects like this. The telescope has run out coolant needed for some instruments in 2009, but its two infrared channels work and at a slightly higher temperature. With less instruments the telescope spends more time studying large stretches of sky.
By the end of the SPLASH study, Spitzer will spend 2475 hours studying two sections of the sky known as COSMOS (Cosmic Evolution Survey) and SXDX (Subaru / XMM-Newton Deep Field), equivalent in size about eight full moons. These are the two darkest parts of the sky. Many telescopes actively studied these areas in several lengths. light, tracking the faint glow of millions of galaxies. Infrared Spitzer’s vision helps weigh the galaxies by identifying them masses.
Astronomers were surprised at the first SPLASH results and the fact that the project caught the “big fish”. Modern theories of star formation believe that the very first galaxies collided and merged by typing in size. According to these models, stars formed in flares these small galaxies collided with each other. But to this the process takes a lot of time. Spitzer finds, massive galaxies formation time between 800 and 1600 million years after birth Of the universe, hardly had enough time to form a hundred billion stars.
“It’s actually hard to form something so massive so fast, ”says Josh Spigle, co-author of a study from Harvard University. – So it’s quite possible that these galaxies formed stars continuously from the very moment of their birth. ”
Another explanation is that the very first galaxies formed even earlier than expected. Astronomers believe that the very first galaxies formed after almost 500 million years after the Big Bang. If they started form earlier, 400 million years after the Big Bang, they have there could be enough time needed to merge with other galaxies. In the end, they could turn into monsters discovered by Spitzer.
Further observations involving multiple telescopes will try find out how these galaxies got so big. Japanese Subaru telescope on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii will collect deep optical images of galaxies for several years.
Time Universe Galaxy Telescope
