Hi everyone, big fan of this universe and have been lurking for years. One of my favourite aspects of astronomy are space telescopes, so understandably I'm a bit obsessed with the Argus Array. I've been wondering if there has been an equivalent of the "Deep field" image that made Hubble so famous? At max "zoom", what would the array see? I'm guessing it would just be a heavily redshifted image of dark gas clouds when the universe was young, but I'm interested to see what others think. Ofc the array consists of more than just telescopes that detect light, but I'm not sure what an image depicting gravitational waves would look like.
On an unrelated note, does anyone else like using programs like space engine and try to simulate their own "deep field"? I have way too much fun doing things like that. Image below was taken in Space engine: What the local group would look like from UDF 423 (if you were to magically be transported to it's position in the HUDF and wait 10 billion years), a 10 billion light year distant galaxy captured in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field. Centre is the Milky Way and the Magellanic clouds, to the right is Andromeda and the Triangulum galaxy. Zoom is similar to the ultra deep field (around 3 arcminutes)
Rynn Wrote:The minimum theoretical diameter for an object to be resolved by an optical sensor is (1.22*[wavelength/diameter])/distance. Wavelength is the frequency of light your detecting, diameter is the diameter of the sensor (or sensor array if using an interferometer), distance is distance to the object. Given this observing at a wavelength of 5e-7m (within the visual spectrum), taking the Argus array to be 1e19m wide (approximately 1000ly) and the distance of 3.26e25m (a gigaparsec) the smallest theoretical diameter of an object to be resolved is 2 meters.
There are many caveats to this however. Interstellar dust will scatter the light, the time to resolve will be enormously long (potentially millions or more years) given the few photons caught, the object may be exceedingly dark/cold exacerbating the latter, relative motion and inflation will distort wavelength etc.
Steve Bowers Wrote:One of the more unusual consequences of an expanding universe is that the universe was a lot smaller when it was younger. This means that the galaxies that we now see as being at the far edge of the observable universe were only a few tens, or hundreds, of millions of light years away when they emitted the light which we now see. The result of this is that galaxies, nebulae, and individual stars look much larger than we might expect given their distance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_di...over_point
On the other hand, the light we receive from these objects is very redshifted, so the number of photons we receive is smaller, and contain less energy, than the light we receive from nearby objects of a similar nature. Once again, the main limitation on the power of the Argus Array is the lack of light we can obtain to build a picture; resolution is less of a problem.
For instance the most distant galaxy yet seen by the James Webb telescope has a redshift of about z=20. and appears the same size as a galaxy 500 million light years away,
even though the light-travel distance is more than 13 billion light years.
I'm afraid I don't have much to add re the capabilities of the AA beyond what is in the article itself and what has already been posted. But wanted to say 'Hi' and 'Welcome'.
Re Space Engine - I don't use it, but there are a number of members - both here and on the OA discord - who use Space Engine and similar programs. I don't know that any of them use them to simulate the deep universe such as you describe, but you could always join and ask.
12-02-2022, 09:10 PM (This post was last modified: 12-02-2022, 09:21 PM by stevebowers.)
Quote:On an unrelated note, does anyone else like using programs like space engine and try to simulate their own "deep field"? I have way too much fun doing things like that. Image below was taken in Space engine: What the local group would look like from UDF 423 (if you were to magically be transported to it's position in the HUDF and wait 10 billion years), a 10 billion light year distant galaxy captured in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field. Centre is the Milky Way and the Magellanic clouds, to the right is Andromeda and the Triangulum galaxy. Zoom is similar to the ultra deep field (around 3 arcminutes).
I like to use Space Engine, especially for its nebula effects and stellar models.
Your 'Deep Field' simulation is interesting - I didn't realise Space Engine simulated red-shift 'z' effects.
On the other hand Space Engine doesn't simulate expansion, as far as I know. If we were able to see the Local Group 13 billion years ago, it would be a lot smaller and closer together, and if we travelled to see the Local Group from a light-travel-time distance of 13 billion years into the future, we would need to travel to a galaxy which is currently much closer than that. Expansion is weird.
Very early galaxies would be full of large, short-lived stars made of hydrogen and helium - these stars would be less dense than the stars we see today, and would explode as supernovas quite quickly - creating an increasingly metal-rich interstellar medium that condensed into the second generation of stars and later.
Would there be black holes at the centres of galaxies already? I think this is something we will find out in the next few decades - it seems quite possible that some, many or most of the supermassive black holes at the heart of galaxies formed during the Big Bang era, but I may be wrong about that.
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