File:Hubble's Search for Faint Field Stars in Galactic Halo (1994-41-196).jpg
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editDescriptionHubble's Search for Faint Field Stars in Galactic Halo (1994-41-196).jpg |
English: Left A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a randomly selected area of sky taken to search for faint red stars that might constitute dark matter in our Milky Way Galaxy. (Dark matter is material of an unknown type that makes up most of the mass of our galaxy). If the dark matter in our Galaxy was made of faint red stars - as many scientists have previously conjectured - then about 38 such stars should have been visible in this HST image. The simulated stars (diamond-shaped symbols), based on theoretical calculations, illustrate what scientists would have seen if the dark matter were locked-up in faint red stars. These surprising results rule out dim stars as an explanation for dark matter in our Galaxy. Right The unmodified HST image shows the region is actually so devoid of stars that far more distant background galaxies can easily be seen. The field is in the constellation Eridanus, far outside the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. This region was chosen to highlight stars in the galactic halo, where dark matter exists, and to avoid the contribution of faint stars in the plane of the Galaxy. Technical Information: The image was constructed from seven exposures totaling almost three hours of searching by HST. The field shown is about 1.5 arc-minutes across. The image was taken in near-infrared light (814 nm) with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, on Feb 8, 1994. This observation is part of the HST parallel observing program. |
Date |
17 October 1994 (upload date) Taken on 8 February 1994 |
Source | Hubble's Search for Faint Field Stars in Galactic Halo |
Author | Credit: J Bahcall, Institute for Advance Study, Princeton and NASA |
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Keywords InfoField | Massive Stars; Stars |
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editPublic domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA and ESA. NASA Hubble material (and ESA Hubble material prior to 2009) is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that only NASA, STScI, and/or ESA is credited as the source of the material. This license does not apply if ESA material created after 2008 or source material from other organizations is in use. The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute under Contract NAS5-26555, or for ESA by the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre. Copyright statement at hubblesite.org or 2008 copyright statement at spacetelescope.org. For material created by the European Space Agency on the spacetelescope.org site since 2009, use the {{ESA-Hubble}} tag. |
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