My God, it's Full of Stars

Today, the Hubble Telescope celebrates 17 years in space. Kinda cool. In honor of the anniversary, astronomers have released a newly captured image of the Carina Nebula - one of the largest panoramic images ever taken with Hubble's cameras - more than 423 megapixels' worth, assembled from 48 frames taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys. The image provides a view spanning a distance of 50 light years across the nebula and includes at least a dozen brilliant stars estimated to be 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun.



As you can see, the image is amazing and when you click it, if you have a slow connection, be patient while it loads. You can go here to read more about the Hubble Telescope or, if you'd like to know more about the image or see it even bigger, go here.

The telescope was named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble whose observations were the first to conclusively prove the existence of other galaxies. Hubble's research also added credibility to the Big Bang theory as well proving that the universe was expanding. Besides having the Hubble Telescope named for him, there is a crater on the Moon named for him, as well. Edwin Hubble died on September 28, 1953 and, interestingly, there was no funeral and his wife never revealed what was done with his body. Evidently, Hubble didn't want any type of service and was either buried in an unmarked grave or, obviously, cremated. To this day no one knows the whereabouts of his remains.

It's All a Matter of Perspective

I, like most people, have been known to let things get to me, on occasion, even though I try desperately to remain an easy going individual. I firmly believe that this hurry-hurry, rush-rush society we've established makes it so easy to get caught-up in the stressful demands of work, personal issues and merely 'living' in general that we can reach a point where we have difficulty proceeding from one day to the next because of the quagmire we create for ourselves by taking everything so very serious and not stopping to realize there's only so much we can do, take on or keep up with - and that's only for the average person. The people who truly have issues are doubly screwed and I can't even imagine what it's like for people who deal with the real pressure of having other people's lives depend on them. I have a variety of things that I do to relieve the pressures of 21st Century living and help me remember that I'm not as important as my ego would try and lead me to believe I am. A couple of years ago, I ran across something that truly helped my perception and and I still refer to it from time to time.

The image below was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope during the period of September 3, 2003 to January 16, 2004 and is called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field or HUDF. The area of sky that the Hubble was pointing to is about 1 tenth the diameter of the full moon as seen from Earth and was chosen because it was relatively dark with very few bright stars close to the viewing field. For Hubble to capture the image, 400 orbits around Earth were required with 800 exposures (pointing to the exact same spot) combined for a total exposure time of 11.3 days. From our perspective, the image covers 11.5 square arcminutes, which is smaller than a grain of sand held at arm's length, and is looking back in time roughly 13 billion years.

Every point, smudge or notion of light is another galaxy.

This single, infinitesimally small area of our universe is displaying (at best count) 10,000 galaxies containing hundreds of millions of stars, each. (Click on it - it's big)



Suddenly my issues seem very small.