Universe's Most Distant Object Spotted

The approximate location of the most distant known galaxy is shown in yellow in an older Hubble picture.

Hubble image courtesy ESA/NASA

(National Geographic)

WASHINGTON – Astronomers believe they've found the oldest thing they've ever seen in the universe: It's a galaxy far, far away from a time long, long ago.

Hidden in a Hubble Space Telescope photo released earlier this year is a small smudge of light that European astronomers now calculate is a galaxy from 13.1 billion years ago. That's a time when the universe was very young, just shy of 600 million years old. That would make it the earliest and most distant galaxy seen so far.  (Yahoo News)

(..Amazing! Science really never ends! I'm so much enlightened with many discoveries and Astronomy is one of the things I'd like to feature as of the moment. More pictures below:)

The Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away from Earth, in an image taken by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010.
Photo: Reuters/NASA/Handout 

(National Geographic) 

 Cygnus Loop Supernova 

  This 1991 image shows a small portion of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant. The formation shown here marks the outer edge of an expanding blast wave from a colossal stellar explosion that occurred about 15,000 years ago. The blast wave slams into clouds of interstellar gas, causing it to glow and revealing information about the composition of the gas.

(National Geographic) 

 

 

 

Something Old, Something New

Two star clusters caught in a single image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, mission are providing astronomers with a study in contrasts. Released April 23, the picture features the Coronet cluster, a small grouping of about a dozen young stars, nestled in a wispy cloud of dust about 420 light-years from Earth.

 Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

(National Geographic) 

Martian Ice Exposed

Exposed ice glints inside a recent impact crater in a newly released picture from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The HiRISE camera aboard the orbiter caught sight of the roughly 66-foot-wide (20-meter-wide) crater inside a dark, half-mile-wide (800-meter-wide) blast zone in March.

This crater, caused by an unknown body, is one of only seven discovered by the HiRISE team that shows the planet's subsurface ice. Even though about half of Mars is thought to have buried ice, such craters are hard to find. That's because the camera most easily spots craters in dusty regions, where the impact blows out a wide swath of dark material that stands out against the bright surface.

Image courtesy NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

(National Geographic) 

 Small revelation: I never had the chance yet to peek in a telescope.. One day I'll do.  And I can feel that it'll be one of the most magnificent sights I''ll ever witness :)