Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                              2020 September 20

                           Breaking Distant Light
                        Image Credit: VIMOS, VLT, ESO

   Explanation: In the distant universe, time appears to run slowly. Since
   time-dilated light appears shifted toward the red end of the spectrum
   (redshifted), astronomers are able to use cosmological time-slowing to
   help measure vast distances in the universe. Featured, the light from
   distant galaxies has been broken up into its constituent colors
   (spectra), allowing astronomers to measure the cosmological redshift of
   known spectral lines. The novelty of the featured image is that the
   distance to hundreds of galaxies can be measured from a single frame,
   in this case one taken by the Visible MultiObject Spectrograph (VIMOS)
   operating at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) array in Chile. Analyzing
   the space distribution of distant objects will allow insight into when
   and how stars and galaxies formed, clustered, and evolved in the early
   universe.

                    Tomorrow's picture: omega sun sailing
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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                      A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC
                             & Michigan Tech. U.


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