The Hubble Deep Field is the result of a series of observations by the
Hubble Space Telescope of a small region of the northern celestial
hemisphere. It was assembled from 342 separate exposures taken with
the Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 over 10
consecutive days between December 18 and December 28, 1995. The field
is small enough that only a few foreground stars in the Milky Way lie
within it; thus, almost all of the 3,000 objects in the image are
galaxies, some of which are among the youngest and most distant known.
By revealing such large numbers of very young galaxies, the HDF has
become a landmark image in the study of the early universe, and it has
been the source of almost 400 scientific papers since it was created.
Three years after the HDF observations were taken, a region in the
south celestial hemisphere was imaged in a similar way and named the
Hubble Deep Field South. The similarities between the two regions
strengthened the belief that the universe is uniform over large scales
and that the Earth occupies a typical region in the universe (the
cosmological principle).
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Deep_Field
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Today's selected anniversaries:
54:
Claudius was fatally poisoned by his wife Agrippina the younger,
making her seventeen-year-old son Nero the next Roman Emperor.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero)
1307:
Thousands of members of the Knights Templar
were simultaneously arrested by agents of Phillip the Fair and
subsequently tortured into "admitting" heresy.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Templar)
1812:
War of 1812: British troops and Mohawk warriors repelled an American
invasion from across the Niagara River in the Battle of Queenston
Heights.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Queenston_Heights)
1843:
The Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, the oldest
continually-operating Jewish service organization in the world, was
founded in New York City.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%27nai_Brith)
1943:
World War II: With a new government led by General Pietro Badoglio,
parts of Italy switched sides to the Allies and declared war on the
Axis Powers.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Badoglio)
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Wikiquote of the day:
"Forgive us the breach of positive commands and negative commands,
whether or not they involve an act, whether or not they are known to
us." -- Liturgy for Yom Kippur
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/w%3AYom_Kippur)