Transcript:
go
there we go Scotty Roberts there we go
you can always hear Scott typing away the little click on the keyboard
yes that's just a recording well I'm impressed that's right it makes
people think I'm busy I have like stacks of papers spreadsheets and stuff like that screensaver is just a giant massive
screen spreadsheet you know with all these numbers on it uh looks pretty good
props that look like I've just got mountains of work you know
I'm really asleep but on my eyelabs eyelids I've had tattooed open eyeballs
I don't buy that one for a minute I like the story Yeah
Yeahs watching on YouTube hey Dusty
and the dad frequency yellow
and Osmos osmosis 007 I like the 007 part you know because I'm a big Bond fan
for sure howdy internet peoples guys is there going to be another Bond
film everybody I mean after watching the place where he
was standing explode you know in the last movie a spoiler alert guys okay if
you haven't seen the last bod film it's too late now too late
I mean you see this ending and you go well that's the end of James Bond you
know anyways well James Bond part two they do
yeah they bring a lot of stuff back yeah maybe they got a young James Bond they go back to when he was a boy yeah
and then we can see all the episodes and Adventures that they never showed us before right yeah before he dies
anyways it's good to be back on with astronomical League live and uh
yeah we're glad you're both here yeah yeah it's it seems like it's been a long
time well probably the beginning of December I think was the last one we did that was a lifetime
that frequency wants to know wasn't there a rumor of a female Bond coming up
new Bond movies are Universal content constant every decade or so
well we need to bond a James Bond that's interested in astronomy
yeah that'll work astrobond
what is NGC 007 what is that oh that would be good yeah yeah
that's that's going to be a contest answer I think right there we go
007 they need a little car like The Jetsons
have maybe they don't have an NGC 007 there's this energy C7
let's stick a couple of zeros in front of it I guess
is uh watching on Facebook thank you for tuning in
sculptor Galaxy sculptor it's in sculptor what a cool
Galaxy Jane Swan is almost as cool as that
Galaxy is almost
well we know what he wants for Christmas A James Bond shirt that's right I won James Bond straight out of James
Bond looking through a telescope that's what I wanted maybe you can write your own show there
maybe yeah I doubt it oh I bet you could debate might pay any
attention well I can write it that's for sure well they use it in the script that's
another story yeah yeah I will another story well thanks to everybody that's tuning
in
astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have recorded a star's final
moments in detail as it was ripped apart and eaten up by a black hole in a tidal
disruption event the shredded star is nearly 300 million
light years away but astronomers used Hubble's powerful ultraviolet sensitivity to analyze his light to
gather forensic clues of the violent event Hubble data found a very bright
hot donut-shaped area of gas the size of the solar system swirling around a black
hole the swirling gas was once a star usually astronomers get just a few
observations at the beginning of A disruption event it's very bright but this energetic collision's proximity and
brightness allowed Hubble to gather ultraviolet data over a longer than normal time period
this is a rare opportunity for scientists to create models of what they think is going on and then compare those
models with what Hubble sees it is an exciting place for scientists to be right at the intersection of The
Gnome and the unknown
wow it's been a long time as Terry said since we've done an astronomical League live program
um but uh here we are on our 24th Episode and we've got uh Terry Mann with
us who will introduce our guests Terry it's great to have you back on to uh the
explore Alliance and to run this astronomical League live program we know that thousands and thousands of
people have watched these uh presentations and you've had when I think about it over the last year or so
you've had some amazing speakers on including your amazing speaker today so
yes yep definitely we have been very fortunate I think that's one of the good things that comes out of using Zoom is
we can reach so much farther to to you know we we would never experience some of the speakers we've seen at Alcon when
we did virtual or on some of these programs that are online uh it really opens up the whole world to learn about
other things going on in astronomy and other places so as Scott said thank you all for being here we really do
appreciate it it does seem like it's been a long time I guess because it was
the beginning of December on the last program and we will be doing another one on February 10th so uh very good make
sure you put that on your calendar uh we'd love to see you come back so let's start off tonight with David Levy David
it sure is good to see you too I haven't seen you in forever either yeah it's been a while it's been a while
today thank you for putting me on tonight well thank you for being here
thank you it's wonderful to be back with you my friends of the astronomical League I am looking very much forward to
the convention this summer in Louisiana I hope to be there
to give a lecture and to autograph my new book it's called flipper Cosmos and
children finding the Eureka moment and I don't know if I have a car I don't think
I have a copy of it so uh you'll just have to imagine it
um anyway if you don't want to wait till the convention to get an autographed
copy you can get it right now this minute today on amazon.com
you log into Amazon go to books and then search for Clipper comma Cosmos and the
book should come right up and you should be able to get it it's the Vintage cells
for twenty dollars on Amazon anyway
um I'm I usually come on right away so I can give a quotation
and I know it's really no longer full anymore we're well into winter but uh today's form is going to be from
John Keats his old Jordan and eroded in on September the 19th 1819
which streams out to be my parents anniversary date and also just a couple of years before
he died and succumbed from tuberculosis where are the sounds of spring I where
are they I think not of them thou Hast thy music too
while Bard clouds Bloom the soft dying gay and touched the stubble planes with
Rosie Hugh I don't know willful choir the small gnats mourn among the river
solos one Aloft were sinking as the light wind lives or dies
and full grown lands loud bleep from hilly Boyne as a cricket sing and now
with treble soft the red best breast whistles from the garden craft and
Gathering swallows Twitter in Disguise thank you very much and back to you
Terry thank you David that's beautiful we really appreciate that and hopefully
uh hopefully we will see you out in Baton Rouge too at the end of July I
believe it's uh July 26th through 29th Carol I think that's I think it's the
week before that I'll bring it up here in a little bit okay okay that's fine
yeah and I will the whole gang's gonna be there so please everybody join us
again I'm pretty sure it is to July Yeah it's you're you're right yeah 26 through
28th I believe and if we have council members watching that'll be on the 25th
it'll be the day before the conference starts so thank you again David
um Chuck let's go to you how about if you give everybody an update on what deadlines are coming up on what awards
thank you Terry um we have in the astronomical League a entire group of awards for youth members
and non-members in some cases and also General League awards that are available
to anyone uh the deadlines for all of these Awards this year are March 31st so
not hard to remember the deadlines among the awards for Youth of the national young astronomer award which is
sponsored by Scott Roberts and explore scientific very generously he sponsored
this for several decades now and uh is a critical element in our ability to
recognize young High School age students who do research and astronomy which is what that award is primarily about we
also have a service award too major Service Awards the whole Commerce Smith and poor conradaria
Awards which provide large cash prizes and in the case of the Smith award a
trip to the National Convention we have an Imaging award the horchheimer Parker Imaging award which provides cash
prizes to its winners one thousand dollars for the first place award and we
have the horchheimer O'Meara journalism Ward which is open to 8 to 14 year olds
who write essays and that too has a one thousand dollar first prize and all of these of course come with plaques our
general Awards include League members who are webmasters for
their clubs or who write the newsletters edit the newsletters for their clubs
that would be the Mabel Stearns award we have a sketching award each year and we
also have a Willamina Fleming Imaging award that is available to female League
members and all of the details about these Awards and how to nominate someone for
them or apply for them can be found on the astronomical League website at www
www.astrolague.org just look down the menu on the left side for the word Awards and you'll find information that
will lead you to links that have application forms and so forth and
nomination forms again the deadline is March 31st I would say if you're
interested in these Awards please note the little comment on the awards page
that says that we need for you to receive a confirming email that we have
received your nomination because sometimes about once every couple years one of these nominations will go to spam
and we do have a backup system to prevent that from happening more than one person will receive submissions
but just in case I'd be sure to look for confirming email March 31st the deadline
for these Awards thank you Terry thank you Chuck it's hard to believe they're rolling around again it seems
like it was just a few days ago we were giving them away in Albuquerque
so thank you okay uh how about if we go to Carol Carol what's going on and with
the league well quite a bit on lots of fronts behind the scenes at least trying to get
ready uh getting Alcon 2023 in place and to uh talk briefly up Beyond uh the uh
observing Awards and so on or the special Youth Awards one thing for master observers who have never received
your master Observer plaque we'll be doing that again at Baton Rouge so if
you have a if you've never received your plaque for being a master Observer uh
stay tuned it'll be out there publicized on the website very soon but we need we would really like to honor you for all
the hard work you've done on that award the other thing is hopefully everyone's
getting out and enjoying the new Comet uh you're going to have to do it this time around because it's uh I forget
what five thousand years or something it may beyond that before it's back so I
think we better take advantage of this opportunity the other thing is uh Baton Rouge is
coming along nice as I was saying earlier uh there's lots of great speakers coming uh and uh
Dr Levy will be there as one of our feature speakers Dave Acker as well as
president because among other speakers as well so be prepared about the end of February
we're estimating the registration will be on the website so stay tuned Terry that's all for right now back to you all
right thank you um let's see Chuck I am going to go to you how soon can you be ready to do your
talk or are you already ready about five microseconds from now I think I can kill enough time there for
you to get ready thank you okay uh tonight Chuck Allen will be giving a
talk titled the the Deep universe and he's going to speak about the factors that limit how far we can see namely the
speed of light and the age and expansion of the universe he'll take us on a review of the furthest objects ever
detected using the Hubble Space Telescope and discuss how much deeper
and more clearly we have been able to peer into space using the James Webb
Telescope new discoveries new problems are generated
are solved I'm Sorry by the jwst finally he will explain some of the big
questions that astrophysicists have tried to answer about the size and the nature of the universe beyond our
Horizons now Chuck has been an amateur astronomer since the age of seven and a lecturer of
over 500 audiences since the age of 12. he is also a past president of the
astronomical league and the current vice president he's the founder of the League's National young astronomer award
he founded that in 1993 and is a recipient of the League's gr Wright
service award he is a league certified gold level
Master Observer if you ever want to know anything ask Chuck he will know it he
has completed 42 League observing programs and coordinates three of them
he is a former international science and engineering Fair judge and the league
left lead judge and has been uh and have a lifelong friendship and association
with Princeton University astrophysicist and author Jay Richard
Gott since the age of 11. wow that is a great friendship when you can keep up
with each other for that length of time Chuck thank you for everything you do for the league for everything you do to
help everybody else and thanks for sharing your knowledge we all really appreciate it so Chuck I'm going to turn
it over to you thank you Terry well my time's up foreign
thank you very much for inviting me amazing good evening everyone and um I'd
like to start this out by telling you something that's always interested me a great deal and that has to do with
extremes when I traveled a long road trip with Richard back in 1967 one of
the features of the trip that we didn't expect was finding the world's tallest structure or radio mast in North Dakota
um things like that have always fascinated me and uh I've always been very fascinated with tall mountains and
Extremes in astronomy as well especially galaxies and quasars and even searching
for distant objects in our solar system like Pluto in fact the faint fuzzy is
fascinating me enough that I've seen 1900 different galaxies at this point in
my observing career and I just love hunting them down it's a lot of fun and astronomers love it too professional
astronomers love to peer deeper and deeper back in time which is of course the only thing we can do uh because the
further back in time they look the more they learn about the early universe and the more they learn about how it
probably got started so the questions we want to look at tonight are three basically
number one how deep have you peered into the Universe um and how deep might you appear how far
of astronomers probed into the universe and How Deeply will we be able to probe
in the future with telescopes like the James Webb so let me share a screen
and we'll get started here
okay does that look okay to everyone yeah okay great very nice
all right so the first thing I guess we'd like to start with is just how far am I to see
without any Optical Aid at all if you go outside on a good dark night and you
have Vision that's capable of doing it you can observe the furthest star that's
visible to the naked eye and that star is v762 and Cassiopeia it shines at
magnitude plus 5.8 it's a little tricky to find and it's not bright you'll need a good dark night but when you see it
you'll be seeing a star whose light left there 16 308 years ago
and that's about 95 quadrillion miles away uh now this is not the furthest star
that has ever been seen naked eye and I'll show you that record and it
happened back in 1885 when a supernova appeared in what was then referred to as
the Andromeda spiral nebula back in the 1800s we didn't know about other
galaxies we thought our galaxy was it and that the spiral nebulae that we now
know are other galaxies were just perhaps solar systems forming within our own Galaxy but people saw this Supernova
that erupted in M31 it Rose to magnitude 5.8 and it's gradually over a period of
six months faded to magnitude 14. but again no one knew at the time that what
they were seeing was a star that was actually a supernova 2.6 million a lot
years away or what's the furthest object that we might see with the naked eye on a
regular basis that is not something that's temporary but a relatively permanent object that we might observe
it's generally believed to be NGC 5128 this is a radio galaxy known better
perhaps a Centaurus a obviously it's in the constellation of Centaurus which
makes it kind of low on the horizon for people in mid-latitudes in the U.S but if you're in the South far south of the
U.S or indeed in the Southern Hemisphere or anywhere in the equatorial regions you can get a good dark night and see
this object without any Optical Aid at all it's a Tuffy magnitude plus 6.8 but
when you see it you'll be observing something that's 13 million light years away
amazingly enough even it is not the furthest thing that anyone could have
observed naked eye and I want you to remember that because I'm going to revisit that in a few minutes
with small telescopes of course you can begin to explore the universe much more deeply with even a modest uh telescope
of just a few inches aperture you can observe the great Virgo cluster at 54 million light years it's full of messier
objects that are quite bright and indeed visible to binoculars and this is the
Hub of our local supercluster of course it's about 1300 galaxies consisting of
more than a quadrillion stars and it's the gravitational Hub of our local Virgo
supercluster of galaxies if we back away from the Virgo cluster a little bit we
find ourselves here and we find the Virgo cluster here 54 million light years away and we find a whole bunch of
other clouds of galaxies that form a giant body that we refer to as lania Kea
that means immeasurable Heaven except while we have measured it it's about 250
million light years across and with an amateur telescope of modest size maybe eight or ten inches you can
observe galaxies in the fornax cluster down here the NGC 7329 group over here
many of the galaxies in the Virgo cluster obviously not all of them just the brighter ones but nonetheless it's
accessible to people with small telescopes but you can see even further with
amateur instruments a lot further back in 1963 uh Dutch astronomer by the
name of Martin Schmidt uh became interested in the star that is pointed to in this Arrow it's in the
constellation of Virgo it's magnitude Plus 12.9 and he was very baffled by its Spectrum
here's a normal Stellar Spectrum down here at the bottom and at the top here was the Spectrum from the Star it didn't
match anything he had ever seen before the more he studied it suddenly he
realized what he was seeing he was seeing the hydrogen Delta gamma and beta
lines shifted far into the red and the oxygen three doublet line here shifted
way into the red in the Spectrum now we knew that the distance an object is away
from us increases the rate at which the expansion of the universe carries it
away and it stretches the light more so the further an object is away the redder it looks the redder the light gets by
the time it reaches us and so that correlation told him that what he was
actually seeing was an object that was 2.4 billion light years away now this is
an object that can easily be seen in an 8 inch telescope maybe smaller on a good night
and yet it's two over two billion light years away it's actually a quasar a
quasi-stellar object it is the core of a brand new Galaxy whose black Central
black hole is accreting material and releasing enormous amounts of energy that we see uh that also has the effect
of creating a jet with something called synchrotron radiation and you can see the jet emanating from this race are
here this is just the core of the Galaxy the actual Galaxy is fairly large in
comparison with this image but that star that Quasar if you will it's not a star
can be seen at over 2 billion light years with a very small telescope indeed
what you'll be doing is looking past this giant cluster of galaxies the
supercluster we call Lani Ikea all the way across a huge swath of the cosmic
web which are streams of galaxies at a quasar in a galaxy that far away
again accessible and small amateur instruments if we moved 3c273 this Quasar and Virgo
if we moved it to the distance of Arcturus a bright star you see in the constellation of balotes it would shine
equally with the sun even though it would be 2 million times further away than the sun that's how bright how
luminous this object is it has a Luminosity of four trillion
Suns now in 1912 a fellow by the name of
Albert Einstein predicted that galaxies and massive objects in space would cause
curvature of space and this might allow for objects further
away to have their light lensed around these foreground objects creating
multiple images or even arcs that we would see again he predicted that in 1912 there
was not until 1979 that this twin Quasar qs00957 plus 561 was discovered in Ursa
Major and what you're seeing here is one Quasar with two blue images here the
Spectra are absolutely identical it's the same quasar but we're seeing two images of it because the light coming
from this Quasar is passing around this foreground Galaxy that you see here and
then being refocused at us and so we see it brighter than it might look otherwise and we see two images in this case
um in the 1980s we discovered the arcs that were predicted you see here these strange arcs which
are really images of galaxies that are in the background behind this huge Galaxy cluster that we call Able 370.
Abel 370s in the constellation of cetus when it lies at a distance of 5 billion
light years and the little arcs you see all over here these are galaxies that
are further away on the other side of the cluster and their light is being bent around the foreground cluster
creating these arcs um I want you to remember this slide and
I refer to Abel 370 and the ring arcs that you see in this picture because
there's something hiding way behind this and it'll come up about 20 years later and a few minutes from now in this talk
with a very large telescope in Chile in 2011 an object called El Gordo was
detected this is an object that's seven billion light years in space it's
actually two Galaxy clusters that are colliding at over a million miles per hour there are about three quadrillion
Stars involved in this Collision now remember I said that there was a
star even further than the Supernova that appeared in the Andromeda galaxy back in 1885 that could have been seen
naked eye there's no record of anyone seeing it naked eye but it could have been and what an event that would have
been if you had it was what we call a gamma ray burst more than likely a super
uh massive star becoming a black hole in a supernova explosion and releasing an
enormous burst of gamma rays this particular burst occurred on March 19
2008 just a few years back and it Rose to magnitude 5.5 and stayed at above
magnitude 6 for about a minute and had you been looking right in that
direction with the unaided eye you might have on a good night scene this little magnitude 5.5 star appear and then
disappear a minute later and what you would have been seeing is light that had traveled to you for
7.5 billion years it covered 7.5 billion light years to get to your eye this
event by the way occurred just hours after Arthur C Clarke died and so this
is referred to as the Clark event as a result of that now you'd think at more
than 7.5 billion light years we'd be well out of the realm of amateur telescopes but man would you'd be wrong
here is one of my favorite objects in space the PGC 1634 plus 705 this is another
Quasar just like the one in Virgo that we talked about a few moments ago but
it's very easy to find with a 10 inch telescope on a good night or maybe
larger possibly an eight on a very good night if you'll be able to see this
first of all you just find this little triangle right here it's got 2 8 magnitude Stars they're very prominent
it's a very interesting little asterism and right next to it is a triangle almost a perfect isosceles triangle with
11th 12th and 13th magnitude stars and right off the southeast side there's a
little Arc of three specks now these are faint enough that in a 10 or 12 inch telescope if you look right at them
they'll probably wink out but glance just a little to the side and you'll see them easily and this one right here is a
quasar whose light has taken 9.5 billion years to reach your eye wow now during
the time time that that light was traveling to your telescope the Galaxy was receding even further and today in
whatever form it has today it lies at nearly 13 billion light years away now
keep in mind when you're talking about seeing light that's traveled to you for nine and a half billion years that the
universe is only 13.8 billion years old so you're seeing some old stuff here with a small telescope
now many amateurs have access and even those of you who merely attend public
events run by astronomy societies will have access to 20 inch dobsonian telescopes and with a 20 inch and
possibly an 18 on a good night maybe even smaller on an exceptional night you
might be able to detect optically looking through an eyepiece a heavily reddened little speck that shines at
magnitude 15.2 in the constellation of links and that reference to Draco is an
error now this object is shining at you from a distance of
12.05 billion light years that is to say when you see it you will
be seeing light that has traveled to you for almost the entire age of the universe you are looking back in time to
a point in time when the universe was less than 2 billion years old today in whatever form that Quasar has today the
Galaxy that used to be in the center of uh is to almost 24 billion light years
away now one of the reasons we can see it is because it's just incredibly bright its
energy output is equal to a quadrillion Suns another reason we can see it is because
there's a foreground cluster of galaxies that are causing a gravitational lensing
effect that's magnifying it in fact the Chandra telescope finally imaged the
fact that what we're really seeing in APM 08279 plus 5255 is a lens image of
the Quasar so we see actually two images of it uh this is a quasar that is powered by a
20 billion solar mass black hole and it's one of the most interesting places
in the universe because it's the largest known repository of water in the entire universe that we've
detected so far in fact the amount of water vapor detected in this Quasar is 140 trillion
times the entire ocean content of the water on the earth and it's all pouring
down the drain of a black hole and here we'd be ostracized for using five gallon
flush toilets nonetheless if we brought APM if we brought this
Quasar to the distance of the star Arcturus 33 light years away it would
shine at magnitude minus 4.45 minus 45. that's 16 million times brighter than
the sun looks in the sky I would suggest to you that that would be sub-optimal
now you remember a little while ago we talked about that Abel 370 cluster that had the ring arcs the gravitational
lensed galaxies that made arcs but I told you that something lurked way in
the background and indeed it did it's a Galaxy called HCM 6A and it was
discovered in 2002 and uh it was determined by its redshift
to lie at a light travel distance of 12.8 uh billion light years uh which set
the record at the time in 2002 is the furthest object that we had ever detected in space
now just as an aside we'll just leave this record where it's lying right now
at the 12.8 billion light years but just as an Assad you'd think that only quasars and galaxies could be seen at
such enormous distances that we're talking about now but that's not really true because just last year astronomers
detected a heavily lensed Galaxy here you see the ring Arc much like those
that we're seeing around able 370 and then that ring Arc they detected a
single spec that had a very discrete Stellar Spectrum it's the furthest star ever
detected the furthest single star the only reason we're seeing it is because the gravitational lens created by these
foreground galaxies here has magnified its image 40 000 times this star is
called Arendelle it lies at a distance a light travel distance of 12.9 billion
light years today of course the star has been extinct for over 12 billion years
and whatever is left over from it it lies at a distance of 28 billion light
years from us yeah now the record that was held by this
galaxy that I showed you a minute ago oops sorry let me go back
ah hold on just a second folks sorry about that
when I showed you this galaxy here
the one that we detected behind Abel 370 and whose light took 300 or excuse me
whose light is coming from uh 12.8 billion light years that record stood
until the year 2012. and in 2012 uh
the Hubble Space Telescope imaged a Galaxy called Macs 1149 jd-1
now this galaxy shines at a very faint magnitude just plus 27 which is
extraordinarily faint but it had a red shift that indicated that the light had been traveling to us
for 13.28 billion light years years it means
that its light has traveled 13.28 billion light years today this galaxy in whatever form it
has today lies at a distance of over 30 billion light years now this record lasted for
three years until the Hubble Space Telescope imaged another little proto-galaxy looking back in time called
gnz 11. this was detected in 2015 in the Hubble Deep Field and it's a little
proto-galaxy it just has about a billion stars in it it's only about 1 25th the
size of the Milky Way and this is what we expect to find when we look so far back in time that we're just looking at
the point where the gas was beginning to coalesce to form Stars after the big bang there's a period before that when
all there was was dark gas that we couldn't see at all it took a while several hundred million years for stars
to begin to form and then glom together to form little proto-galaxies like gnz11
now this was determined to have a light travel distance to so 13.4 billion light
years that means that we're now seeing an object as it was just 400 million years after the big bang
right in that era when stars were starting to form this record lasted for
seven years until uh in April of last year 2022 the Subaru
telescope detected this little red smudge you can barely see it in the actual photo it's been enlarged here
greatly I'll give you an even better view of it here and what you're seeing here is a Galaxy called HD1 it's another
Proto Galaxy it lies at a light travel distance to us of
13.44 billion years now again let me emphasize the universe is 13.8 billion
years old this light's been traveling to us for 13.4 of those 13.8 billion years
well this record lasted just three months I want you to keep in mind the distance
13.44 billion light years because now we have the James Webb coming into play
and it's detected in the constellation of sculptor this past July a Galaxy
called glass z13. it's only 1600 light years across here
it is here and you see it enlarged in this image right here
uh and its distance was determined from its red shift to be 13.47 billion light years and that
record lasted just two months and two months later in September of 2022 a
constellation in the constellation of foreign acts the James Webb detected Jade's GSD 13-0 it's this little red
smudge that you see right here the distance based on a threat shift was
determined to be 13.525 billion years now that's the
distance the light has traveled the Galaxy itself is now 33 billion light years away because the whole time the
light was traveling to us the universe was expanding and this record which was not fully confirmed yet before something even
further was found and that was Sears 93316 in volodis this was announced in
October of 2022 just a few months ago it has an incredible redshift its light has
been stretched because it's been passing through expanding space for so long that
its estimated distance light travel distance is 13.6 billion light years uh
it's a distance today something in the order of 35 billion light years that's where in whatever form it has today it
would be now this is the current record it's not yet confirmed there are some
people who question its distance because it seems so extraordinary that we would be able to see a proto-galaxy as it was
just 200 million years that's two tenths of a billion years after the big bang it
was thought it would take the gas a little bit longer to begin coalescing to form
a little Proto galaxies like this now notice that the James Webb Space
Telescope increased the distance record by only 0.16 billion light years from 13.44 to
13.6 and 13.6 hasn't been fully confirmed yet
a spectroscopic work is being done to confirm it so should we expect to see much further what if we put another
space telescope in space with a mirror a mile across would we be able to see
vastly further than this and the answer is no and the reason for that is that lights only had the age of the universe
to reach us and no light was shining until about 200 million years after the big bang so we're going to increase the
record by inches the purpose of telescopes like the James Webb is not to see much further but to see better the
nature of the objects that we're looking at and wow is it accomplished that
now just to make very clear what's going on here
you take one of these galaxies like HD1 when the light left HD1 the Galaxy was
about a billion light years away from us and the universe was much smaller but because the universe was expanding
the light ended up having to travel 13.5 billion years to reach us and today while that expansion was taking place
the galaxies out here at 35 billion light years and so we can't see much further than
light travel distances of 13.5 or 13.6 because we will be looking back into an
era so far back in time that stars haven't formed yet so there are those limits
but what about these huge redshifts that we're observing in objects like the Sears Galaxy I showed you a moment ago
which currently holds the record if confirmed well there are a couple of problems that astronomers are puzzled
and bothered by one of them is that the James Webb has now found a whole bunch
of well-developed barred spiral galaxies some of which have light travel distances of 11 billion light years
no one thought that mature galaxies of this type could form quite that fast after the big bang but apparently they
do and so that's puzzling the second question is dust is dust causing some of
these galaxies to appear more redshifted than they are that can be sorted out by careful spectrographic analysis and
that's being done now nonetheless uh if you like to like to
search for deep things if you too are interested in extremes uh and you have
access to even a small telescope of some kind or a friend's telescope something in the perhaps 10 inch range you might
want to go out and try to find PGC 1634 plus 705 and Draco and know that when
you see that little 14.6 magnitude spec and you will see it if it's a good night and you have at least a 10 inch you're
going to be seeing light that took 95 million centuries to reach your eye those photons travel that long and you
stopped them covering 55 sextillion miles so that's the Deep universe and uh Happy
Hunting to all of you thank you Chuck that was really
interesting like you know you I guess I never really think about because time and distance to me and to a
lot of people I think it's so hard to comprehend um you know there's so little to compare
it to I mean it's just very hard so thank you that is an excellent
talk that shows how to compare that and exactly what the James Webb has done I
mean we all know it's done an incredible job but that is amazing one thing I should one thing I should add too is
that these limits are all imposed by the fact that we can only look back in time
there are galaxies probably a trillion light years away uh we'll never see
those but we can only look so far back in time and so we're limited and how far
we can see and and those are the limits we talked about tonight yeah well thank you very much Scott is
there any questions anywhere uh just some just some comments here
um uh you know about how mind-blowing uh this presentation is uh
Connell Richards says sounds like a wonderful talk Chuck your presentations on deep Universe are always fascinating
so thank you people are glad it's Friday they're glad that they're watching the astronomical League
um you know it's a nice combo and uh um so anyhow uh
Connell further mentions I was hoping those numbers are up to date all all I
need oh okay he's just talking about observing okay so anyhow but um uh you
know it is amazing that we are able to look back that far and to see that far
away and you know so and uh it's it's a little bit hard to
wrap your head around that you know there's a point because the expanding expansion of the universe that
uh there's probably other galaxies out there but will never actually be able to see them so don't you think that's what makes
astronomy so interesting though oh yeah I've always got something to learn something new to look at that's right
something new to comprehend I think that for me that is one of the big draws here
we don't know everything I mean it changes so often and just to be able to
go outside with a small telescope or an eight or ten inch whatever and to be able to look and really think
how far back in time you're looking at you know when you talk to kids and you try to explain you know every time you
look up you're looking at light from way back you know however many years whatever you're looking at and that just
really kind of still blows my mind as an adult what we actually look at and I
think for me that is one of the draws one of the beauties of the universe I I have a question for Chuck though
with gravitational lensing would it be possible to to see
past this uh this wall no there's no wall
um I mean you know this I'm using that metaphorically but um but uh is it
possible that something let's say 13.8 14 something like that could be gravitationally lensed to where we could
detect it first of all to for anything to be seen by us it has to
be shining nothing is shining until 200 billion years after the big bank so we're not going to be able to see past
the point where stars formed um what's what's really remarkable is
because we can only look back in time uh because light takes so long to get to us it could only travel at the speed of
light we're not able to see the universe as it is you know if light travels at an
infinite speed sure uh I mean you look at a like the Hubble Deep Field about 98
of the galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field are so far away
that anything happening there today like a supernova for example will never be
seen on Earth no matter how many trillion years you wait you will never get here there's too much space expanding and accelerating in its
expansion and there are Horizons that prevent us from overseeing that light so most galaxies that you see in these deep
images and many of the galaxies I showed you tonight are already unreachable it's
like they're frozen they're the last photons that are have we will ever see
from those galaxies are already on the way here they left there a long time ago but the ones leaving there now no
wow wow yeah that's pretty incredible well thank you Chuck we sure do
appreciate it my pleasure thank you and I guess if uh I'd like to thank
everybody that is here David thank you for joining us we hope you're back February 10th uh Al live will be back
February 10th at 7 p.m Carol it's always a pleasure to see you too
and and Chuck too I talked to you guys fairly often and Scott thank you for
everything you've done uh we really appreciate it and thank you to everybody
out there watching we really appreciate the fact you're out there hopefully you haven't got snow on the ground and
clouds everywhere I look and everywhere I read everyone trying to observe is saying oh my gosh this has been a
terrible year and it's been terrible Tara there must have been lots of people buying telescopic equipment though oh
there must have been yeah yeah that's the reason for all that bad weather that's for sure
yeah it has to be it's just it's like I haven't seen the stars and I don't know
when I mean it's really been a lot of snow a lot of blowing snow ice yeah it's
it's been nasty so hopefully all of you out there are having better and clear
skies warmer weather um and please consider joining us at
Alcon at the end of July July 26th through the 30th uh 29th or 30th I
believe uh the Saturday night will be our banquet and that will be the wrap up
it'll be the last Saturday of July and that will wrap up Alcon we will be in
Baton Rouge so please consider joining us uh check our website if you remember
watch the reflector and we'll have some information on Al live about that too as it gets closer watch for the website
I'm looking forward to the website it's a very nice hotel really good rate so
please join us there if you can we'd be glad to meet all of you so I think I'm going to wrap up unless somebody else
has anything they'd like to say nope all right
thank you and thank you everybody for joining us we do appreciate it everyone
have a great evening and a great weekend thanks good night good night good night
foreign well again thanks everyone for tuning in
to astronomical League live I hope you have a great weekend uh as well we've
got a little feature that will show you from the European Space Agency who is uh
very much involved in the sample return Mission from the perseverance
Rover so let's let that roll and then we'll run the end credits here
[Music]
thank you foreign [Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause] [Music] foreign
[Music]
foreign
[Music]
[Music]
foreign [Music]