Distant Galaxies
NASA unveiled images of a galactic tadpole, a pair of monster mice, a nursery for newborn stars and a giant pillar of dust Tuesday in the first batch of pictures snapped by Hubble Space Telescope's newest camera.
All four detailed images of the distant universe were produced by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which is operating superbly after its installation in March, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
As spectacular as the central subjects of the photographs are, the background is of critical importance to astronomers.
What appear as jewel-toned pinwheels, ovals and diamonds on the blackness of space are actually faraway galaxies. Scientists counted more than 3,000 discernible galaxies, or fragments of galaxies, in the image and another 3,000 or so fainter points of light and smudges that may or may not be galaxies, reports CBS News Space Consultant Bill Harwood.
"We are looking back across 90 percent of the age of the universe," said Johns Hopkins University astronomer Holland Ford, the lead investigator on the project.
"We are seeing galaxies that we estimate formed within 1 billion years of the birth of the universe. What a happy surprise to see these galaxies stretching back almost to the beginning of time."
Many scientists believe the universe began with a monstrous explosion, called the big bang, some 14 billion years ago.
Hubble, launched 12 years ago at a cost of about $2.2 billion, has looked back in time before, notably in a famous image known as the Hubble Deep Field, which was like a visual core sample of the universe made in 1995. But the advanced survey camera has extremely high resolution and is examining a patch of sky with twice the area of the Hubble field.
Ford said each of the 4 images released has nearly 17 million pixels, compared to 5 million pixels it would have had if taken by a high-end consumer camera.
Looking at a tiny area of the sky -- the size of two grains of sand held at arm's length -- the new camera has captured astonishing views of galaxies with a 10-fold increase in efficiency over previous Hubble instruments.
"When we saw the first ACS images, my colleagues and I were stunned," Ford said. "We knew the ACS would be good, but we had underestimated how extraordinary the images would be. ... "Even with high definition television, you see only a fraction of the details that are in an ACS image. You need an eight-foot by eight-foot print to see all of the detail."
One image of a galaxy 420 million light-years away in the constellation Draco was dubbed "The Tadpole" because of its long streaky tail that stretched more than 280,000 light-years.
Its distorted shape was caused by a hit-and-run interloper: a tiny blue galaxy that slammed through the larger galaxy and is now shown leaving the scene, NASA said.
A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles.
A couple of other long-tailed galaxies some 300 million light-years away appeared to be warily circling one another, so astronomers nicknamed them "The Mice." More than celestial rodents, these two galaxies are destined to merge into one massive galaxy, NASA researchers said.
They may also foretell the eventual fate of the Milky Way galaxy, which contains Earth. Computer simulations indicate the Milky Way is likely to collide in several billion years with its nearest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy.
The new camera also captured images of what looks a bit like a nightmare sea monster, rearing up out of red waves. In reality it was only a massive pillar of gas and dust known as the Cone Nebula, a relatively nearby feature at 2,500 light-years' distance.
A star nursery at the heart of the Omega Nebula, some 5,500 light-years away, was also displayed.
The new camera was installed by space walking astronauts during a Hubble servicing mission in March. The astronauts also attached two new solar arrays, a new electronic control unit and a gyroscopic reaction wheel assembly to help it move, or slew, from target to target.
In addition, they installed a high-tech refrigeration system to review an infrared camera that has been dormant since its nitrogen ice coolant ran out in 1999. The so-called "cryo-cooler" uses neon gas and three tiny turbines spinning at an astonishing 400,000 rpm to chill the camera to about 70 degrees above absolute zero."
Hubble project scientist David Leckrone said today the cryocooler is performing normally and that scientists hope to release the first pictures from the revived Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer - NICMOS - in June.
"I'm very happy to report the internal functioning of the NICMOS is very much as it was when we last used it in late 1998 for astronomical observations," he said. "We hope by early June to have some demonstration-quality images from the successfully revived NICMOS. So that's happy news from that front."
HST program manager Preston Burch said Hubble's new solar arrays are providing 27 percent more power than the panels they replaced and that the new power control unit, which was not designed to be replaced in orbit, is working flawlessly.
Harwood reports the only technical problem of any significance at present is higher-than-wanted current in one of the observatory's stabilizing gyroscopes. While gyro No. 3 is continuing to operate, it could fail at any time. But Burch said a backup gyro is available and additional failures would be required to impact science operations.
CBS News Space Consultant William Harwood has covered America's space program full time for more than 15 years, focusing on space shuttle operations, planetary exploration and astronomy. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood provides up-to-the-minute space reports for CBS News and regularly contributes to Spaceflight Now and The Washington Post.