Astronomers from the 3D-Drift And SHift (3D-DASH) program have released the largest near-infrared image ever taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
A patch of sky imaged by the 3D-DASH survey. Image credit: Mowla et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac71af.
3D-DASH provides astronomers with a complete near-infrared survey of the entire COSMOS field, one of the richest data fields for extragalactic studies beyond the Milky Way.
It covers a total area almost six times the size of the Moon in the sky as seen from Earth.
This record is likely to remain unbroken by Hubble’s successor, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, which is instead built for sensitive, close-up images to capture fine detail of a small area.
It is the largest near-infrared image of the sky available to astronomers until the next generation of telescopes launch in the next decade, such as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and Euclid.
“Since its launch more than 30 years ago, Hubble has led a renaissance in the study of how galaxies have changed in the last 10-billion years of the Universe,” said Dr. Lamiya Mowla, an astronomer in the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto.
“The 3D-DASH program extends Hubble’s legacy in wide-area imaging so we can begin to unravel the mysteries of the galaxies beyond our own.”
3D-DASH will help to identify unique phenomena like the Universe’s most massive galaxies, highly active black holes, and galaxies on the brink of colliding and merging into one.
“I am curious about monster galaxies, which are the most massive ones in the Universe formed by the mergers of other galaxies,” Dr. Mowla said.
“How did their structures grow, and what drove the changes in their form?”
“It was difficult to study these extremely rare events using existing images, which is what motivated the design of this large survey.”
These images show the most massive star-forming galaxies in the 3D-DASH field. The galaxies are sorted by their redshift, which are shown in the top left corner. Each stamp is 40,000 x 40,000 parsecs. Image credit: Mowla et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac71af.
To image such an expansive patch of sky, Dr. Mowla and colleagues employed a new technique with Hubble known as Drift And SHift (DASH).
DASH creates an image that is eight times larger than Hubble’s standard field of view by capturing multiple shots that are then stitched together into one master mosaic, similar to taking a panoramic picture on a smartphone.
It also takes images faster than the typical technique, snapping eight pictures per Hubble’s orbit instead of one picture, achieving in 250 hours what would previously have taken 2,000 hours.
“3D-DASH adds a new layer of unique observations in the COSMOS field and is also a steppingstone to the space surveys of the next decade,” said Dr. Ivelina Momcheva, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.
“It gives us a sneak peek of future scientific discoveries and allows us to develop new techniques to analyze these large datasets.”
The team’s paper will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
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Lamiya A. Mowla et al. 2022. 3D-DASH: The Widest Near-Infrared Hubble Space Telescope Survey. ApJ, in press; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac71af
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