Chasing Hubble's Shadows: The Search for Galaxies at the Edge of Time - Softcover

Kanipe, Jeff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809034077 ISBN 13: 9780809034079

Publisher: Hill and Wang, 2007

Synopsis

Chasing Hubble’s Shadows is an account of the continuing efforts of astronomers to probe the outermost limits of the observable universe. The book derives its title from something the great American astronomer Edwin Hubble once wrote: “Eventually, we reach the dim boundary—the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.”

 

The quest for Hubble’s “shadows”—those unimaginably distant, wispy traces of stars and galaxies that formed within the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang—takes us back, in effect, to the beginning of time as we are able to perceive it, when the first discrete stellar objects appeared out of what has lately come to be known as the “cosmic dark age.” The information that is being gleaned from these dim sources—chiefly with the aid of Hubble’s namesake, the Hubble Space Telescope—promises to yield clues to many cosmic puzzles, including the nature of the mysterious “dark energy” that is now believed to pervade all of space.

Jeff Kanipe is an independent science journalist, specializing in astronomy, cosmology, and planetary science. He is the author of A Skywatcher's Year.

Chasing Hubble's Shadow is an account of the continuing efforts of astronomers to probe the outermost universe. The book derives its title from something the American astronomer Edwin Hubble once wrote: "Eventually, we reach the dim boundary—the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial." 
 
The quest for Hubble's "shadows"—those wispy, unimaginably distant traces of stars and galaxies that formed within the first few hundred million years after the big bang—takes us back, in effect, to the beginning of time as we are able to perceive it, when the first discrete stellar objects appeared out of what has lately come to be known as "the cosmic dark ages." The information that is being gleaned from these dim sources—chiefly with the aid of Hubble's namesake, the Hubble Space Telescope—promises to yield clues to many cosmic puzzles, including the nature of the mysterious "dark energy" that is now believed to pervade all of space.  

"Mr. Kanipe has provided a first-rate account of these mysteries and of how dauntless scientists go about trying to solve them."—Jeffery Marsh, The Washington Times

 

"In Chasing Hubble's Shadows, the scientific journalist Jeff Kanipe takes us to the frontiers of today's astronomy, where astronomers use an armory of sophisticated tools and techniques to peer at dimly visible galaxies astonishingly far away and far back in time. Their ability to do so has been magnified greatly since the launch (or, rather, the repair a few years later) of the Hubble Space Telescope . . . The two great scientific mysteries of the age are that most of the universe seems to consist of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy,' the terms used to describe our ignorance of the nature of most of the energy that holds the universe together and the matter of which it is constructed, neither of which corresponds to the forms of energy and matter which we observe around us. Mr. Kanipe has provided a first-rate account of these mysteries and of how dauntless scientists go about trying to solve them."—Jeffery Marsh, The Washington Times

 

"A fast-paced tour . . . [Kanipe's] enthusiasm is bound to excite and inspire."—New Scientist

 

"Part history, part detective story, and even part travelogue . . . This book will be both instructive and enjoyable for anyone with an interest in the night skies."—Science News

 

"A vivid description of how astronomers work and how ideas develop . . . Anyone curious about the mechanisms of our world will be thrilled by the book."—Patrick Petitjean, Nature

 

“A broad overview of the current state of cosmology research, and a glimpse of some of the people and personalities involved in the field, all concisely summarized . . . The book is a great way to get up to speed on the current knowledge of, and challenges facing, astronomers in this field.”—Jeff Foust, The Space Review

"A masterful synthesis of the work of many observational cosmologists, describing the searches for distant galaxies, explaining the possible limitations in the supernovae work, and integrating the optical studies with those of microwaves . . . [An] excellent book."—D. E. Hogg, Emeritus, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Choice
 
"Painting with a broad brush on a great canvas, Jeff Kanipe illustrates what we know and what we don't yet know about our cosmic origins. As you read Chasing Hubble's Shadows, you visit the great observatories where the chase is under way, meet the people who are doing the work, and learn how matter in our universe has been shaped by the forces of gravity and dark energy."—Robert P. Kirshner, author of The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos
 
"If you want to know why the Hubble Telescope has gotten astronomers so excited and to learn how this mighty instrument helped astronomers to uncover the dark mysteries of matter and energy in the universe, take a trip back to the beginning of time with Jeff Kanipe's lively and informative book."—Donald Goldsmith, coauthor of Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
 

"Kanipe interviews a number of observers and theorists, reports their opinions and experiences and gives a good look at both the culture and the key issues of modern astronomy . . . [G]reat stuff for astronomy buffs."—Kirkus Reviews

 

"Current research on the earliest galaxies engages the interest of astronomy journalist Kanipe. Reporting that the science has been revolutionized by the image of the Hubble deep field, the first baby portrait ever made of the universe by the Hubble Space Telescope, Kanipe explains how astrophysicists are interpreting the ruddy 'blobjects' appearing in the picture. Their distance is a crucial question, and the basis for the answer (an astounding 12 to 13 billion light years) emerges in the author's explanation of cosmological measuring sticks such as supernovae. Of most interest to scientists, however, is the evolutionary connection between the protogalaxies and the beginning of the universe. Piecing together the first billion years of the cosmos is Kanipe's main focus. He starts with demarcations of the epoch, including a dark era in which thick gas blocked light; a 'reionization' era coinciding with the formation of the first stars; and then their conglomeration into galaxies. Due to Kanipe's clarity on technical points, general readers will be as excited by the discovery as cosmologists."—Gilbert Taylor, Booklist
 

"The Hubble Space Telescope has been a wonderful tool because its location above the Earth's atmosphere has made possible astronomical views inaccessible even to the largest land-bound telescopes. Science journalist Kanipe tells how the Hubble has peered far back in time to show us many galaxies as they existed just a few hundred million years after the birth of the current universe. He also relates the hopes of today's astronomers that these ultraearly views of galaxies will help them solve the problem of the 'missing mass' believed to be embedded in dark matter and dark energy. Kanipe's book is enjoyable and well written . . . Recommended."—Library Journal

 

"Kanipe follows in the footsteps of the great astronomer Edwin Hubble and his successors in this deeply enjoyable book, which is part memoir and part scientific detective story. Kanipe chronicles the development of deep space astronomy, traveling, for example, to the 10-meter telescopes atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and observing a galaxy in the making with astronomer Richard Ellis, who has already discovered at least 12 previously unobserved galaxies. By 2011, NASA will be able to probe the universe's dark ages when it launches the James Webb Space Telescope, which will offer the chance to gaze 180 million years back, to the births of many galaxies and stars. Kanipe's breathless writing conveys his own excitement over the revelations that new advances in astronomy can tell us about our planet and our place in the universe."—Publishers Weekly

About this title

About the Author

Jeff Kanipe is an independent science journalist, specializing in astronomy, cosmology, and planetary science. His most recent book was A Skywatcher’s Year.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpted from Chasing Hubble’s Shadows by Jeff Kanipe. Copyright © 2006 by Jeff Kanipe. Published February 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved

1

HUNTING FOR SNARKS

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

—Lewis Carroll, “The Hunting of the Snark”

“The cup of the Big Dipper contains over four hundred galaxies,” said the planetarium director, emphasizing his remark by rapidly circling the famous star grouping with his red pointer. “Just imagine,” he continued, “if there are that many galaxies confined to just this tiny area, then there must be hundreds of millions of galaxies scattered across the entire sky, each containing tens of billions of stars.” And with that, he turned a dial on his console, and the stars began to march majestically across the sky to the opening strains of Henry Mancini’s “Theme from A Summer Place.”

Fittingly, it was late summer 1968 and the first time I had ever set foot in a planetarium. My youthful interest in astronomy was still rudimentary, but already I had learned and could recognize on sight most of the constellations. I watched the familiar patterns rise in the east, drift overhead, and disappear in the west as the impossibly high strings of “Summer Place” soared in the background. Perhaps I am easily amused, but I was wowed.

Thirty-six years later, with the public release of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF)—the deepest, farthest look into the universe ever made—my first-time planetarium experience came back to me and I was wowed all over again. Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore announced that a region of sky just three thousandths the size of the cup of the Big Dipper contains at least ten thousand galaxies! That’s an area you could easily cover with a pencil eraser held at arm’s length. Assuming that the distribution of galaxies is similar across the sky, the number of galaxies embraced by the Big Dipper’s cup would be well over 190 million, counting all those down to the faintest ones seen in the HUDF. If you extrapolate these values to the number of potentially observable galaxies across the entire sky, you get a truly mind-boggling number: 127 billion! Of course, the true population, consisting of these galaxies plus those that cannot be, or have yet to be, detected with current telescopes, would be far greater.

We know how deep Earth’s oceans are. We know the width and breadth of the solar system. The size of the Milky Way is no longer in question; nor is the expanse of space lying between the nearby galaxies. But just how deep is the universe? Such a question has the most profound implications, because in this case, deep implies more than size and distance on the grandest of scales—it implies age as well. Some of the galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, for example, lie more than 12 billion light-years away. But that immensity also represents a span of time—lookback time—of more than 12 billion years in the past, because it has taken that long for the photons from these remotest known galaxies to reach Earth, despite zipping along at a velocity of 300,000 kilometers per second. Hence the universe is far richer than people thought it was in the 1960s or, for that matter, in the three decades that followed. And today the answer still eludes astronomers. Not even the acute vision of the Hubble Space Telescope, the instrument used to make the remarkable HUDF image, can survey such realms. Still, the Hubble telescope has afforded us the first glimpse of the objects that live near the farthest reaches of the universe, billions of newly formed and inchoate galaxies. Only that telescope, at this time in history, could have provided humankind with such a penetrating look at what creation hath wrought.

What a marvel and scientific triumph the Hubble telescope has been. No other contrivance save Galileo’s humble two-inch telescope (“Old Discoverer,” he called his fifth and favorite model) has done more to advance humanity’s understanding of the universe in so brief a time. Even with a modest 2.4-meter mirror, the telescope’s location above the distorting effects of Earth’s atmosphere has extended our visual acuity more than a billion times. If fireflies flickered in the dark recesses of the moon, we could see them with the Hubble telescope. Its abundant light-gathering power has enabled astronomers to study stars, star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies in far greater detail and at significantly greater distances than anyone had thought possible before it was placed into orbit in 1990. All the more reason to mourn its probable loss due to a federal budget constraint. Stamping out wasteful government spending is certainly a good thing, but wasting an invaluable telescope that has revolutionized the way we look at the universe does not seem to be in the best interest of science or society. But that’s another topic for another day.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809034077
• ISBN 13: 9780809034079
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224