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Hubble is not capable of seeing 13 billion light years away. What they are claiming is 13.1 billion light years away was an object that both Hubble and the Spitzer Space Telescope observed using a gravitational lens. Even then they are basing that 13.1 billion light years distance solely on the redshift, which is highly unreliable for determining distance, particularly when using a gravitational lens. They observed no type 1a supernovas, and therefore do not have a standard candle for measuring distance.
In other words, it is pure hype in an attempt to gain headlines, and possibly more funding. The ONLY "object" that we can confirm is more than 13 billion light years away is the Cosmic Background Radiation. When the James Webb Space Telescope is deployed in 2018 we will be able to see approximately 13.5 billion light years away, but not until then.
Currently, UDFj-39546284 is officially regarded as a galaxy "candidate", leaving open the possibility that it might be some other kind of structure. The best enlarged images of the object are heavily pixalated. I agree that the James Webb Space Telescope should be able to provide greater clarity to such distant objects, but that doesn't necessarily mean the light from such objects are not observable today. Obviously they are, but just not very clear. The "redshift is estimated by carefully studying them in Hubble images taken through a range of different filters." While redshift was used, it's used as a current estimation, not necessarily meaning it to be definitive. I will correctly restate my previous comment by saying that that the structure is estimated to be about 13.2 billion years old, not necessarily 13.2 billion light years away which was incorrect on my part.
I agree that using redshift alone as a guide for measuring the linear distance of extremely distant objects isn't always reliable. But then I didn't say anything about the redshift. As jayrandom pointed out, it could in fact be much more distant than 13.2 billion light years away, taking into account the acceleration of the expansion of space. In other words, it could well be that the object may appear to be 13.2 billion years old because that's the estimated time it has taken for the light we see right now it's taken to reach us. If an extremely distant object, say billions of light years away, is highly redshifted as we see it now, then it's not too unreasonable to think that some of those objects have in fact becoming even more remote, possibly moving away faster than light speed due to the expansion of space over billions of years and are well beyond the particle horizon of the universe, or beyond the area of the universe that is observable to us.
UFDj-39546284 could indeed be much farther than 13.2 billion light years away from us. I don't know if it's 30 billion light years away from us, but it's certainly possible. That said, things don't necessarily have to be extremely distant in space to be farther back in time. Which is where long exposures come in. The longer the exposure, the better faint, or even unseen objects begin to more clearly appear. As has been indicated, we're not only peering at objects that are extremely distant in space, but objects that are also extremely distant in time.
Pure hype just to gain headlines and possible funding? Well that's possible, but I'm not so sure that's necessarily the case here. That's not to say things aren't sometimes hyped though. Is there any documentation to support that it's pure hype? Is there any documentation that shows Hubble and Spitzer were jointly used in the discovery of this image? Seems to me there wouldn't be any valid reason not to acknowledge it.
Granted, the object is said to be too faint to be confirmed spectroscopically with Hubble or any of the telescopes in operation today, thus the need for the James Webb Space Telescope. So UFDj-39546284 currently remains listed as a "candidate". I do think that knowledge of what Spitzer has provided plays a big part, but I've seen nothing to suggest that Spitzer was actually used for the image itself. All that seems to be mentioned, at least from what I've seen, is that the image is the result of the joint ESA/NASA Hubble project using the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, and that Hubble has been pushed to its limits to capture such an object. Hubble has had better intrumentation and software installed. That's not saying much because the image isn't clear. There's just enough to see that it looks like it has a primative galaxy-like shape. I had seen mentioned somewhere that it required around 100 hours of long exposure to collect enough light to detect this faint object in addition to using different filters. I would guess that the 13.2 billion years figure is based on known Type 1a Supernovae, perhaps SN Primo dating back to about 9 billion years ago, but that's just an assumption on my part.
As of January 2012, the most distant Type 1a Supernova called SN Primo, as far as I know, is thought to have occurred about 9 billion years ago. Relative to the OP's original question, just in reference to a standard candle Type 1a Supernova (SM Primo), 9 billion years is still vastly more distant than 1 billion years as was asked by Follower of X, although Follower of X was asking about distance in terms of light years.
Don't sell yourself short. 13.2 billion years was the light travel time. The proper distance (i.e. the actual distance from us to the object) is more like 30 billion light years.
Thanks Jay. Sometimes I screw up. I used the wrong term by saying 13.2 billion light years away. I should have said that it appears to be 13.2 billion years old. Still, that's a heck of a long time ago. I think you could be right that it could be 30 billion light years away right now, even though we're just now seeing it as it was 13.2 billion years ago.
Thanks Jay. Sometimes I screw up. I used the wrong term by saying 13.2 billion light years away. I should have said that it appears to be 13.2 billion years old. Still, that's a heck of a long time ago. I think you could be right that it could be 30 billion light years away right now, even though we're just now seeing it as it was 13.2 billion years ago.
Not a screw up at all. Sorry if it seems like i was trying to correct. The light travel time is always what they report in the media.
In order to be visible at that distance, the object would have to produce a lot of photons. Such as a large galaxy or a cluster of galaxies. Even then the photons would be so far dispersed that the object would not be visible to the naked eye. The human eye requires between 5 and 14 photons in order to "see" something. If an object is a billion light years away, we would need a telescope to amplify the number of photons in a given area of the sky in order to see the object.
Has the light reached the earth? or are we zooming in on light that hasn't gotten here?
If we are seeing something billions of light years away it should be closer than it actually is because as you say we are viewing its light, where it that? Wouldn't it have to be somewhere in between? or closer than where it actually is?
Again if something is billions of light years away we see it, however we see its light so its actually closer and what is behind it is farther... is that what you are saying?
Not a screw up at all. Sorry if it seems like i was trying to correct. The light travel time is always what they report in the media.
No apology necessary Jay. I didn't take it that way at all. After reading Glitch's interesting post though, it just dawned on me that my own short words were pretty messed up. LOL! I enjoy such threads and posts because the subject itself is interesting. I think we can all agree that whatever the universe does, it's truly remarkable and probably much more about it than we'll ever really know.
I agree that the media tends to limit things and express news in the shortest or catchiest possible way. Some habits are hard to break.
Has the light reached the earth? or are we zooming in on light that hasn't gotten here?
If we are seeing something billions of light years away it should be closer than it actually is because as you say we are viewing its light, where it that? Wouldn't it have to be somewhere in between? or closer than where it actually is?
Again if something is billions of light years away we see it, however we see its light so its actually closer and what is behind it is farther... is that what you are saying?
We can only view light that has reached us. There is no way to "zoom in" on light that hasn't gotten here. When we look through telescopes, we are just magnifying an image, not "zooming in".
I don't understand the second question. If we look at something that is one billion light years away from us, we are seeing it as it was one billion years ago, as that is how long the light from it takes to reach us. If there is something behind it, say at a distance of 1.3 billion light years, then we are seeing that as it was 1.3 billion years ago. Our own sun, Sol, we see as it was 8 minutes ago, because it is 8 light minutes away from us, and thus light leaving it takes 8 minutes to reach us. In other words, if the sun were to suddenly flicker out of existence, we would not know about it until 8 minutes after the fact, as the light that left it at the very second before it went out is still coming at us.
Consider standing on a street corner and looking at a row of parked cars. The image of the first car nearest you gets to you first, followed by the second, then the third, then the fourth, and so on and so forth. They are just fractions of light milliseconds away from you, which is a time so short that your brain cannot detect it. It seems as though the image of all the cars is reaching you instantaneously and at the same time, but that is just not the case. Just like when you turn on a light switch. The light has to leave the bulb and scatter out to all corners of the room. But it happens so incredibly fast that again, your brain cannot detect it. When you shine a flash light down a dark street, you see it as if the beam issued out of it at once and started to reflect off of everything at the very instant you turned it on. Not the case! Nothing is instantaneous, not even light.
all good points however if we view the sun from earth and it suddenly burned out we cant see it (the burn out) for 8 minutes but if we view it through a telescope (with an extra dark lenses ) prior to the 8 minutes being over we should be able to see it sooner...!? no? The same idea would go with seeing something further. If we zoom into a planet that splits into 2 that is 2 billion light years away we see it as how it is 2 billion light years away but if we zoom further or bring it back we should be seeing it change in time...?
If this is not the case then we are simply viewing an image that doesn't change no matter how much we zoom in or out and that doesn't make sense.
all good points however if we view the sun from earth and it suddenly burned out we cant see it (the burn out) for 8 minutes but if we view it through a telescope (with an extra dark lenses ) prior to the 8 minutes being over we should be able to see it sooner...!? no? The same idea would go with seeing something further. If we zoom into a planet that splits into 2 that is 2 billion light years away we see it as how it is 2 billion light years away but if we zoom further or bring it back we should be seeing it change in time...?
If this is not the case then we are simply viewing an image that doesn't change no matter how much we zoom in or out and that doesn't make sense.
Do I make sense?
No. All the telescope does is magnify the view of what the sun was doing 8 minutes ago. It takes 8 minutes for the photons (light) from the sun to reach the Earth regardless of whether you look at it with a telescope or not. The telescope simply collects more photons. It has nothing to do with seeing the event the instant it happens. That doesn't happen. No matter what event you see, it takes time for photons to reach your eye.
You can indeed see changes in events, but they are changes that occur in the past, in the case of the sun, events that are 8 minutes old by the time you see them.
all good points however if we view the sun from earth and it suddenly burned out we cant see it (the burn out) for 8 minutes but if we view it through a telescope (with an extra dark lenses ) prior to the 8 minutes being over we should be able to see it sooner...!? no? The same idea would go with seeing something further. If we zoom into a planet that splits into 2 that is 2 billion light years away we see it as how it is 2 billion light years away but if we zoom further or bring it back we should be seeing it change in time...?
If this is not the case then we are simply viewing an image that doesn't change no matter how much we zoom in or out and that doesn't make sense.
Do I make sense?
No. If I were looking into a telescope at the sun, I would not see that it had gone dark any sooner than I would have without the telescope. Again, we cannot "zoom in" on anything, we can only magnify the image of it.
In other words, we CANNOT see an image before it reaches us. The light that reaches our eyes without a telescope, is the same light that needs to reach the telescope itself in order for us to see the magnified image in it. Even telescopes that are in orbit or on space probes cannot show us an image before we would see it with our own eyes. Even though they are closer to what we are looking at than we are, the signal from those telescopes still travel to us at, you guessed it, the speed of light. If a laser beam of death (or a gamma ray burst) were headed at us at the speed of light, there would be absolutely no way of knowing ahead of time. We wouldn't know until we were being fried to death by it.
If you were looking at someone down the street, and that person started waving at you, the image of that person waving would reach your eyes no sooner or later than if you were looking at that person with the naked eye, through binoculars, or through a telescope.
Something that is a billion light years away is no different. We may see its light twinkling in the sky. It is one billion year old light. Looking at it through a telescope, we are still looking at one billion year old light, we are just magnifying the image of it to see it better.
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) prior to the 8 minutes being over we should be able to see it sooner...!? no? The same idea would go with seeing something further. If we zoom into a planet that splits into 2 that is 2 billion light years away we see it as how it is 2 billion light years away but if we zoom further or bring it back we should be seeing it change in time...?
