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The Universe "Down Under" is the Latest Target for Hubble's Latest Deep-View


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Turning its penetrating vision toward southern skies, the Hubble telescope has peered down a 12- billion-light-year-long corridor loaded with a dazzling assortment of thousands of never-before-seen galaxies. The observation, called the Hubble Deep Field South, doubles the number of far-flung galaxies available to astronomers for deciphering the history of the universe.

This new far-look complements the original Hubble "deep field" taken in late 1995, when Hubble was aimed at a small patch of space near the Big Dipper. Hubble's sharp vision allows astronomers to sort galaxy shapes. The image is dominated by beautiful pinwheel-shaped disk galaxies, which are like our Milky Way.

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      At MSFC, a group of scientists and engineers operate the Marshall 100-meter X-ray beamline, a world-class end-to-end test facility for flight and laboratory X-ray optics, instruments, and telescopes. As per the name, it consists of a 100-meter-long vacuum tube with an 8-meter-long, 3-meter-diameter instrument chamber and a variety of X-ray sources ranging from 0.25 – 114 keV. Across the street sits the X-Ray and Cryogenic Facility (XRCF), a 527-meter-long beamline with an 18-meter-long, 6-meter-diameter instrument chamber. These facilities are available for the scientific community to use and highlight the comprehensive optics development and test capability that Marshall is known for.
      Within the X-ray astrophysics community there exist a variety of angular resolution and effective area needs for focusing optics. Given its storied history in X-ray optics, MSFC is uniquely poised to fulfill requirements for large or small, medium- or high-angular-resolution X-ray optics. To help guide technology development, the astrophysics community convenes once per decade to produce a decadal survey. The need for high-angular-resolution and high-throughput X-ray optics is strongly endorsed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s.In pursuit of this goal, MSFC is continuing to advance the state of the art in full-shell optics. This work will enable the extraordinary mysteries of the X-ray universe to be revealed.
      Project Leads
      Dr. Jessica Gaskin and Dr. Stephen Bongiorno, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC)
      Sponsoring Organizations
      The NASA Astrophysics Division supports this work primarily through the Internal Scientist Funding Model Direct Work Package and competed solicitations. This work is also supported by the Heliophysics Division through competed solicitations, as well as by directed work from other government entities.
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      Last Updated Oct 15, 2024 Related Terms
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