May 8 1997
From The Space Library
At Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute, NASA scientists described the long-duration-exposure pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) as the "best picture we have yet of the early universe," announcing that, approximately 12 billion years ago, the universe had been completely barren of galaxies. Richard S. Ellis of England's Institute of Astronomy emphasized the significance of science's new ability to use the HST to view "a time before galaxy formation." The HST had opened its lens for many hours of exposure, focusing on a tiny wedge of the sky to capture its most probing picture ever, known as the Hubble Deep Field Survey. Focusing only on a small speck of the sky had enabled astronomers to look deeper into the universe than ever before. Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute estimated that the HST had captured a view of the universe at only about 10 percent of its present age.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
