The Very Large Telescope's (VLT) Multi-unit spectroscopic explorer (MUSE) has been used to study the galaxies in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field. It has also revealed previously unseen galaxies:
Sometimes, astronomy is about surveying widely to get the big picture. And sometimes it's about looking more and more deeply. First released in 2004, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field is clearly about going deep. It's a composite image of a tiny region of space, located in the direction of the southern constellation Fornax, made from Hubble Space Telescope data gathered over several months. There are an estimated 10,000 galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which exist as far back in time as 13 billion years ago (between 400 and 800 million years after the Big Bang). Being able to see galaxies so near the beginning of our universe has been a fantastic tool for understanding how the universe has evolved. And now – thanks to an instrument called MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer), astronomers have been able to eke out yet more information – a veritable bonanza of information – from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Their work is being published today (November 29, 2017) in a series of 10 papers in a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Also at ESO.
The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey - I. Survey description, data reduction, and source detection (open, DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201730833) (DX)
The rest of the papers are paywalled:
The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey - II. Spectroscopic redshifts and comparisons to color selections of high-redshift galaxies (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201731195) (DX)The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey - III. Testing photometric redshifts to 30th magnitude (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201731351) (DX)
The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey - IV. Global properties of C III] emitters (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201730985) (DX)
The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey - V. Spatially resolved stellar kinematics of galaxies at redshift 0.2 ≲ z ≲ 0.8 (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201730905) (DX)
The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey - VI. The faint-end of the Lyα luminosity function at 2.91 (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201731431) (DX)
The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey - VII. Fe ii* emission in star-forming galaxies (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201731499) (DX)
The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey - VIII. Extended Lyman-α haloes around high-z star-forming galaxies (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201731480) (DX)
The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey - IX. Evolution of galaxy merger fraction since z ≈ 6 (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201731586) (DX)
The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey - X. Lyα equivalent widths at 2.9 (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201731579) (DX)
Related Stories
Telescope array will spy on spy satellites, star surfaces and black holes
At a time when astronomers are building billion-dollar telescopes with mirrors 30 meters across, the 1.4-meter instrument being installed this month atop South Baldy Mountain in New Mexico may seem like a bit player. But over the next few years, nine more identical telescopes will join it on the grassy, 3200-meter summit, forming a Y-shaped array that will surpass any other optical telescope in its eye for detail. When it's complete around 2025, the $200 million Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer (MROI) will have the equivalent resolution of a gigantic telescope 347 meters across.
MROI's small telescopes can't match the light-gathering power of its giant cousins, so it will be limited to bright targets. But by combining light from the spread-out telescopes, it is expected to make out small structures on stellar surfaces, image dust around newborn stars, and peer at supermassive black holes at the center of some galaxies. It will even be able to make out details as small as a centimeter across on satellites in geosynchronous orbit, 36,000 kilometers above Earth, enabling it to spy on spy satellites.
That's one reason why the U.S. Air Force, which wants to monitor its own orbital assets and presumably those of others, is funding MROI. "They want to know: Did the boom break or did some part of the photovoltaic panels collapse?" says Michelle Creech-Eakman, an astronomer at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro and project scientist on MROI. But if the facility succeeds, its biggest impact could be on the field of astronomy, by drawing new attention to the promise of optical interferometry, a powerful but challenging strategy for extracting exquisitely sharp images from relatively small, cheap telescopes.
Wikipedia article on Astronomical Optical Interferometry.
Related: Very Large Telescope's MUSE Instrument Studies the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field
Very Large Telescope's ESPRESSO Combines Light From All Four Unit Telescopes for the First Time
Very Large Telescope Captures First Direct Image of a Planet Being Formed
Submitted via IRC for Fnord666
If Lowell Observatory's Gerard van Belle gets his way, you'll soon be watching an exoplanet cross the face of its star, hundreds of light-years from the Earth. He can't show you that right now, but he should be able to when the new mirrors are installed at the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer in northern Arizona. They're arriving now and should soon start collecting starlight—and making it the highest-resolution optical telescope in the world.
Van Belle recently showed Ars around the gigantic instrument, which bears almost no resemblance to what a non-astronomer pictures when they hear the word "telescope." There are a couple of more traditional telescopes in dome-topped silos on site, including one built in 1920s in Ohio, where it spent the first few decades of its life.
The best way to improve imagery on these traditional scopes is to increase the diameter of the mirror catching light. But this has its limits—perfect mirrors can only be built so large.
[...] A bigger mirror provides two advantages: it catches more light (making fainter objects visible) and it produces a higher-resolution image. If you give up on the first advantage, you can go all in on the second by laying out a handful of small mirrors over a considerable distance. The total mirror area (and therefore light collection) won't be that great, but the tremendous diameter of the array cranks the resolution up to 11. That's the principle behind the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer, a Y-shaped installation with a functional diameter of up to 430 meters.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/meet-the-telescope-that-may-soon-show-you-an-exo-eclipse/
Related: Very Large Telescope Interferometer Captures Best Ever Image of Another Star (Antares)
Very Large Telescope's MUSE Instrument Studies the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field
Very Large Telescope's ESPRESSO Combines Light From All Four Unit Telescopes for the First Time
High-Resolution View Into The Infrared Universe
Very Large Telescope Captures First Direct Image of a Planet Being Formed
Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer Will Have Resolution of a 347-Meter Telescope for $200m
The Swarm Telescope Concept
(Score: 2) by Kymation on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:46AM
There is always Sci Hub [sci-hub.bz].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday December 03 2017, @07:14AM (3 children)
Gotta dig the Lyman-alpha! But more than that, do you realize the size of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field is miniscule? Like this:
So, 1600, 72 of which are new, times twelve million. Space is big, people. Big.
Douglas Adams. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [wikiquote.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @07:27AM (2 children)
I don't really think it translates like that. Not all of space is equal. The universe seems to have an ecliptic plane, just as galaxies and solar systems have ecliptics. That is, not all angles at which you can point that thing are going to be equally revealing. If there's nothing there, better eyes aren't going to see any more of nothing. We might suspect that the first place they aimed it was some place that they EXPECTED to find some new stuff.
At the end of the story, we aren't going to know how populous any portion of the sky might be until we look.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:21PM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle [wikipedia.org]
That's true, but if there are hidden Lyman-alpha emitter galaxies in a deep field, there are probably more elsewhere.
Eventually we will have all-sky surveys capable of mapping every galaxy (hundreds of billions). Call it the All-Sky Deep Field (ASDF). WFIRST [wikipedia.org] might help there since it will have 100 times the field of view of Hubble.
Sooner than that, we will have the LSST [wikipedia.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday December 04 2017, @09:46AM
Takyon is correct. We do not know that all of space is equal. But on the other hand, we equally do not know it is not. So the 12 million times figure could be woefully low. Or not. What is at stake here? "Your God is too small," in the words of Bruno Giordano. I hate it, when people's god is too small. It is even worse when your god is too small for the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Tiny god. Small mind. Tiny hands. Big Real Estate! Still very, very tiny.