List of deep fields

Last updated

Deepfieldscomparison.jpg
Comparison of how far in the past some of the Hubble Space Telescope's deep fields have seen in terms of redshift and million years and also how far the James Webb Space Telescope should be able to see.

In astronomy, a deep field is an image of a portion of the sky taken with a very long exposure time, in order to detect and study faint objects. The depth of the field refers to the apparent magnitude or the flux of the faintest objects that can be detected in the image. [2] Deep field observations usually cover a small angular area on the sky, because of the large amounts of telescope time required to reach faint flux limits. Deep fields are used primarily to study galaxy evolution and the cosmic evolution of active galactic nuclei, and to detect faint objects at high redshift. Numerous ground-based and space-based observatories have taken deep-field observations at wavelengths spanning radio to X-rays.

Contents

The first deep-field image to receive a great deal of public attention was the Hubble Deep Field, observed in 1995 with the WFPC2 camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. Other space telescopes that have obtained deep-field observations include the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the XMM-Newton Observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope.

Left: image taken by Hubble (2017) vs Right: the image taken by Webb (2022) [3]
NASA-HubbleSpaceTelescope-DeepField-2017.jpg
Webb's First Deep Field (adjusted).jpg

Table

The following table gives a partial list of deep-field observations taken since 1995.

ImageNameYear capturedSize (arcminute)Number of exposures
HubbleDeepField.800px.jpg Hubble Deep Field 19952.6′x2.6′342
Hubble Deep Field South.jpg Hubble Deep Field South 19985.3²′995
Chandra Deep Field South.jpg Chandra Deep Field South 1999–200016′ across11
Hubble ultra deep field high rez edit1.jpg Hubble Ultra-Deep Field 2003–20042.4′x2.4′808
Hubble-ExtendedGrothStrip.jpg Extended Groth Strip 2004–200570′x10′over 500
Hubble Ultra Deep Field region of the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey.jpg Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS)2011
Teenage galaxies in the distant Universe.jpg ESO’s VLT and the SINFONI instrument [9] 2012
Hubble Extreme Deep Field (full resolution).png Hubble eXtreme Deep Field 20122.3′x3′
NASA-HS201427a-HubbleUltraDeepField2014-20140603.jpg Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (UV/VIS/NIR)2014
Hubble Frontier Fields view of MACSJ0416.1-2403.jpg Hubble Frontier Fields MACS J0416.1-2403 [10] 2015
Heic1401a-Abell2744-20140107.jpg Hubble Frontier Fields Abell 2744 [11] 2015
MACSJ0717.jpg Hubble Frontier Fields MACS J0717.5+37452015
A galactic gathering.jpg Hubble Frontier Fields MACS J1149.5+2223 [12] 2015
Abell S1063.jpg Hubble Frontier Fields Abell S1063 [13] 2016
The last of the Frontier Fields -- Abell 370.jpg Hubble Frontier Fields Abell 370 [14] 2017
Abell 370 parallel field.jpg Hubble Frontier Fields Abell 370 parallel field [15] 2017
NASA-Galaxies15k-HubbleHDUV-20180816.png Hubble Deep UV (HDUV) Legacy Survey [16] 2018
Hubble Legacy Field.png Hubble Legacy Field [1] 201925′x25′7,500
Dark Energy Survey deep field image.jpg Dark Energy Survey [17] [18] 202118.41′x9.64′
Webb's First Deep Field.jpg Webb's First Deep Field 20222.4′ across
NASA-JWST-JADES-FirstDeepField-20221209.png James Webb Space Telescope – JADES (James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey)
First Deep Field [19] [20]
20224-6′×12′ approx;
(4′×6′ and 6′×6′ subsets adjacent) [21]
Jades Deep Field Annotated.png James Webb Space Telescope – JADES (James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey) [22] 2024 ??′ across

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubble Space Telescope</span> NASA/ESA space telescope launched in 1990

The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile, renowned as a vital research tool and as a public relations boon for astronomy. The Hubble telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble and is one of NASA's Great Observatories. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) selects Hubble's targets and processes the resulting data, while the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) controls the spacecraft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Galaxy cluster</span> Structure made up of a gravitationally-bound aggregation of hundreds of galaxies

A galaxy cluster, or a cluster of galaxies, is a structure that consists of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound together by gravity, with typical masses ranging from 1014 to 1015 solar masses. They are the second-largest known gravitationally bound structures in the universe after some superclusters (of which only one, the Shapley Supercluster, is known to be bound). They were believed to be the largest known structures in the universe until the 1980s, when superclusters were discovered. One of the key features of clusters is the intracluster medium (ICM). The ICM consists of heated gas between the galaxies and has a peak temperature between 2–15 keV that is dependent on the total mass of the cluster. Galaxy clusters should not be confused with galactic clusters (also known as open clusters), which are star clusters within galaxies, or with globular clusters, which typically orbit galaxies. Small aggregates of galaxies are referred to as galaxy groups rather than clusters of galaxies. The galaxy groups and clusters can themselves cluster together to form superclusters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubble Deep Field</span> Multiple exposure image of deep space in the constellation Ursa Major

The Hubble Deep Field (HDF) is an image of a small region in the constellation Ursa Major, constructed from a series of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. It covers an area about 2.6 arcminutes on a side, about one 24-millionth of the whole sky, which is equivalent in angular size to a tennis ball at a distance of 100 metres. The image was assembled from 342 separate exposures taken with the Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 over ten consecutive days between December 18 and 28, 1995.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Webb Space Telescope</span> NASA/ESA/CSA space telescope launched in 2021

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. As the largest telescope in space, it is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments, allowing it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. This enables investigations across many fields of astronomy and cosmology, such as observation of the first stars and the formation of the first galaxies, and detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephan's Quintet</span> Visual grouping of five galaxies

Stephan's Quintet is a visual grouping of five galaxies of which four form the first compact galaxy group ever discovered. The group, visible in the constellation Pegasus, was discovered by Édouard Stephan in 1877 at the Marseille Observatory. The group is the most studied of all the compact galaxy groups. The brightest member of the visual grouping is NGC 7320, which has extensive H II regions, identified as red blobs, where active star formation is occurring.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubble Ultra-Deep Field</span> Deep-field space image

The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) is a deep-field image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, containing an estimated 10,000 galaxies. The original data for the image was collected by the Hubble Space Telescope from September 2003 to January 2004 and the first version of the image was released on March 9, 2004. It includes light from galaxies that existed about 13 billion years ago, some 400 to 800 million years after the Big Bang.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coma Cluster</span> Cluster of galaxies in the constellation Coma Berenices

The Coma Cluster is a large cluster of galaxies that contains over 1,000 identified galaxies. Along with the Leo Cluster, it is one of the two major clusters comprising the Coma Supercluster. It is located in and takes its name from the constellation Coma Berenices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extended Groth Strip</span>

The Extended Groth Strip is an image of a small region between the constellations of Ursa Major and Boötes, based on the results of a series of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. It covers an area 70 arcminutes across and 10 arcminutes wide, which correlates to a patch of sky roughly the width of a finger stretched at arm's length. The image was assembled from over 500 separate exposures taken with the Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys at 63 different pointings, spread out over the course of one year from June 2004 to March 2005. The complete image at the highest resolution in JPEG format is nearly 250 megabytes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey</span> Astronomical survey that combines observations from 3 great NASA observatories

The Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, or GOODS, is an astronomical survey combining deep observations from three of NASA's Great Observatories: the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, along with data from other space-based telescopes, such as XMM Newton, and some of the world's most powerful ground-based telescopes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abell 370</span> Galaxy cluster in the constellation Cetus

Abell 370 is a galaxy cluster located nearly 5 billion light-years away from the Earth, in the constellation Cetus. Its core is made up of several hundred galaxies. It was catalogued by George Abell, and is the most distant of the clusters he catalogued.

<i>Euclid</i> (spacecraft) European visible and near-infrared space observatory

Euclid is a wide-angle space telescope with a 600-megapixel camera to record visible light, a near-infrared spectrometer, and photometer, to determine the redshift of detected galaxies. It was developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Euclid Consortium and was launched on 1 July 2023 from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UDFj-39546284</span> High red-shift structure in the constellation Fornax

UDFj-39546284 is a high-redshift Lyman-break galaxy discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope in infrared Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) observations in 2009. The object, located in the Fornax constellation, was identified by G. Illingworth, R. Bouwens and the HUDF09 Team during 2009 and 2010. It was reported with a redshift of z~10 using Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescope photometric data, with later reports in 2012 suggesting a possibly higher redshift of z = 11.9 Although doubts were raised that this galaxy could instead be a low-redshift interloper with extreme spectral emission lines producing the appearance of a very high redshift source, later spectroscopic observations by the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRSpec instrument in 2022 confirmed the galaxy's high redshift to a spectroscopically confirmed estimate of z = 11.58.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abell 2744</span> Galaxy cluster in the constellation Sculptor

Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandora's Cluster, is a giant galaxy cluster resulting from the simultaneous pile-up of at least four separate, smaller galaxy clusters that took place over a span of 350 million years, and is located approximately 4 billion light years from Earth. The galaxies in the cluster make up less than five percent of its mass. The gas is so hot that it shines only in X-rays. Dark matter makes up around 75 percent of the cluster's mass.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MACS0647-JD</span> The farthest known galaxy from the Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis

MACS0647-JD is a galaxy with a redshift of about z = 10.7, equivalent to a light travel distance of 13.26 billion light-years. If the distance estimate is correct, it formed about 427 million years after the Big Bang.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey</span> Hubble Space Telescope project

The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) is the largest project in the history of the Hubble Space Telescope, with 902 assigned orbits of observing time. It was carried out between 2010 and 2013 with two cameras on board Hubble – WFC3 and ACS – and aims to explore galactic evolution in the early Universe, and the very first seeds of cosmic structure at less than one billion years after the Big Bang.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubble Legacy Field</span> Image by Hubble Space Telescope of a small region of space containing ~265,000 galaxies

The Hubble Legacy Field is an image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, containing an estimated 265,000 galaxies. The original release was composed of Hubble Space Telescope data accumulated over a 16-year period. Looking back approximately 13 billion years it has been used to search for galaxies that existed at that time. The image was taken in a section of the sky with a low density of bright stars in the near-field, allowing much better viewing of dimmer, more distant objects. It builds on the data collected for the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field and the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey.

<i>Webbs First Deep Field</i> First operational image from NASAs James Webb Space Telescope

Webb's First Deep Field is the first operational image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The deep-field photograph, which covers a tiny area of sky visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is centered on SMACS 0723, a galaxy cluster in the constellation of Volans. Thousands of galaxies are visible in the image, some as old as 13 billion years. It is the highest-resolution image of the early universe ever taken. Captured by the telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the image was revealed to the public by NASA on 11 July 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SMACS 0723</span> Galaxy cluster in the constellation Volans

SMACS J0723.3–7327, commonly referred to as SMACS 0723, is a galaxy cluster about 4 billion light years from Earth, within the southern constellation of Volans. It is a patch of sky visible from the Southern Hemisphere on Earth and often observed by the Hubble Space Telescope and other telescopes in search of the deep past. It was the target of the first full-color image to be unveiled by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), imaged using NIRCam, with spectra included, showing objects lensed by the cluster with redshifts implying they are 13.1 billion years old. The cluster has been previously observed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) as part of the Southern MAssive Cluster Survey (SMACS), as well as Planck and Chandra.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Lotz</span> American astronomer

Jennifer Mae Lotz is an American astronomer who studies the shape and evolution of galaxies, including galaxy mergers. She works at the NOIRLab, a project of the National Science Foundation, as director of the Gemini Observatory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">JADES-GS-z13-0</span> High-redshift Lyman-break galaxy that is one of the oldest galaxies known

JADES-GS-z13-0 is a high-redshift Lyman-break galaxy discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) during NIRCam imaging for the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) on 29 September 2022. Spectroscopic observations by JWST's NIRSpec instrument in October 2022 confirmed the galaxy's redshift of z = 13.2 to a high accuracy, establishing it as the oldest and most distant spectroscopically-confirmed galaxy at the time, with a light-travel distance of 13.4 billion years. Due to the expansion of the universe, its present proper distance is approximately 33 billion light-years. In 2024, two older and more distant galaxies, JADES-GS-z14-0 and JADES-GS-z14-1, were found.

References

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