46 Billion Pixels of the Universe

192 Gigabytes.  One picture.  And I thought the 4 GB Andromeda shot was impressive (okay it still is). But this shot of the Milky Way, the largest single astronomical image ever compiled, is truly staggering in its detail.  Showing multiple images taken with different filters, the massive compilation is the culmination of a 5-year observing program by the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. It’s amazing how much detail is shown, as you zoom in across the different features and truly get a sense for the magnitude of our Galaxy, and for the massive population of stars. I have yet to find a way to...

Peeking at Galaxies in the Early Universe

The only way we can understand the cosmos is to find new and innovative ways to interpret the light we capture from it.  Using the largest and most technologically advanced telescopes in the world, we peer deeper into space, further back in time, and see photons that have spent eons travelling to Earth.  If we can get rid of all of the other light from closer objects, and zero in on this distant light, we can begin to understand what was present at the beginning. Using data from deep sky surveys conducted by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers from...