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Galaxy Hunters.
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- Author(s): Cowen, Ron
- Source:
National Geographic; Feb2003, Vol. 203 Issue 2, p2, 27p, 40 Color Photographs, 1 Diagram
- Subject Terms:
GALAXY formation;
STAR formation;
DARK matter;
INTERSTELLAR medium;
GALAXIES;
MILKY Way;
STEIDEL, Chuck;
ASTRONOMY;
BRYAN, Greg;
ZWICKY, Fritz;
PEEBLES, Jim, 1935-;
OSTRIKER, Jerry;
RUBIN, Vera C., 1928-2016;
LYMAN, Theodore, 1874-1954;
DICKINSON, Mark;
FABER, Sandra;
DJORGOVSKI, George;
ASTRONOMERS
- Additional Information
- Abstract:
Some 200,000 galaxies whim through space in a computer-generated model using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an ambitious effort to map one-quarter of the cosmos. Based on images from the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, the model marks the locations of nearby galaxies with representative pictures, greatly magnified. Beyond lie 100 billion more galaxies, each with many billions of stars. Scientists are coming closer to determining where all the material came from that coalesced into the galaxies. Theorists using supercomputer simulations have retraced the steps that produced the first stars and galaxies. Astronomers peering through giant telescopes have journeyed back in time in search of the first galaxies. Researchers studying images from the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered the breathtaking diversity of the galaxies that surround us today--from giant pinwheels blazing with the blue light of newborn stars, to misshapen footballs glowing with the ruddy hue of stars born billions of years ago, to tattered galaxies trailing long streamers of stars torn out by collisions with intruder galaxies. Tom Abel of Pennsylvania State University, thinks he has figured out how the first star was born. The first star was born about 14 billion years ago, Abel believes, in a universe that was more mysterious but also far simpler than our own. Smaller and denser than today, the universe was pitch-black and contained mostly hydrogen and helium with a smattering of lithium. Arjun Dey of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Daniel Stern of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, veteran observer Hy Spinrad of the University of California, Berkeley, and graduate student Steve Dawson were aiming the Keck I telescope at a catalog of faint galaxies, hoping to peer deeper than ever before into the universe-a billion years farther back in time than the galaxies found by Steidel.
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