This site may earn chapter commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

hubble galaxies

The universe is a staggeringly large place with more than galaxies than you could fathom. It seems understandable that when dealing with such massive numbers that a few galaxies could fall through the cracks. But a new analysis of Hubble Telescope data indicates that astronomers might take vastly underestimated the scale of the universe. There may really be 10 times more galaxies in the universe than nosotros previously thought.

Before today, the best estimate of the number of galaxies existed in the universe came from a 1995 observation by Hubble, shortly afterwards information technology was repaired in orbit. That's when NASA used the space telescope to discover a patch of sky continuously for ten days. The resulting paradigm revealed a bounding main of galaxies in a section of space that looked empty to the unaided eye. This famous image is known as the Hubble Deep Field.

Hubble Deep Field

Based on the number of galaxies seen in the Deep Field, astronomers extrapolated the likely number of galaxies across the whole sky equally effectually 200 1000000. The new estimate comes from Christopher Conselice of the Academy of Nottingham, who says the bodily effigy is closer to ii trillion. And then, we may accept been missing 90% of the galaxies in previous estimates. How can our best estimate exist an order of magnitude off? Those unseen galaxies are just very, very faint. Hubble just wasn't designed with this in mind. Design piece of work on Hubble started in the 1970s, and it was built mostly in the 1980s. Engineering has taken leaps and bounds since so.

Hubble in orbit

Conselice and his squad used deep space data from Hubble taken over years and converted them into 3D maps, applying new mathematical models to infer the existence of galaxies that tin can't exist observed directly. This besides allowed the team to get a more authentic count of visible galaxies across the sky, rather than simply extrapolating from a single frame. The written report has been accepted for publication in the prominent Astrophysical Periodical.

If at that place are indeed 2 trillion observable galaxies in the universe, astronomers will have a lot of piece of work to do. Hubble isn't powerful enough to detect these objects direct because they're too distant and dim, but the upcoming James Webb Infinite Telescope will be much more than powerful. It'due south scheduled to launch in 2022 and will exist able to notice much more distant objects. Only then will be able to get a proper handle on how many galaxies are waiting out at that place to exist discovered.