Hubble captures spectacular near-infrared image

© NASA/ESA

Astronomers have released an incredible image. Indeed, it is the largest near-infrared image ever taken by NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope and showing the early Universe. Explanations.

This unpublished image is offered to us by the astronomers of the programme 3D-Drift And SHift (3D-DASH). What the programme provides astronomers with a comprehensive near-infrared study of the COSMOS field, in other words one of the richest data fields for extragalactic analyzes beyond the Milky Way. It covers an area regarding six times the size of the Lune in the cielview from the Terre.

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“Since its launch more than 30 years ago, Hubble has led a renaissance in the study of how galaxies have changed over the last ten billion years of the Universe. The 3D-DASH program extends Hubble’s legacy in large-scale imagery so we can begin to unlock the mysteries of galaxies beyond our own.”explained Dr. Lamiya Mowla, an astronomer at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto.

3D-DASH will therefore help to identify unique phenomena such as those that occur in the most massive galaxies in the Universe, regarding black holes or regarding galaxies regarding to collide and merge between they. “It was difficult to study these extremely rare events using already existing images, which motivated the design of this large survey. 3D-DASH adds a new layer of unique observations in the COSMOS domain and also provides a springboard for space surveys over the next decade. This gives us insight into future scientific discoveries and allows us to develop new techniques to analyze these large datasets.”added Dr. Ivelina Momcheva, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.