Star Struck
The Czar absolutely loves pictures like this:
Almost every splash of light or color in this picture is a galaxy.
Let us walk through what happened.
The Hubble Space Telescope was pointed toward a black nothing in space. A spot where there are practically no stars—and then it was pretty much asked to look in between even those few stars. They turned on its Wide Field Camera and left it on for 48 hours.
And this is the picture it took, showing thousands of galaxies.
Here are two mind-benders for you.
1. Some of the tiniest red dots in this picture (you need to see the massive original here (warning: long load time) to find them best) are galaxies about 13 billion light years away. That means they would be at the edge of the possible universe, if the universe had an edge, but it doesn’t. More precisely, these red spots let you look 13 billion years backward into time—seeing the Universe as it looked when it was a mere 700,000 years old. These are some of the oldest stars, and most are probably long since dead and gone by now.
2. This richness and splendor comes from one tiny piece of the night sky. According to Bad Astronomy’s calculations, performing the same test to the entire night sky would result in 30 million images like this. That’s right: this picture is just one-thirty-millionth* of what you might see. We know this because we get similar pictures every time we try this experiment in a different dark corner.
And remember: virtually every one of these spots of light is a galaxy containing anywhere from thousands to billions of stars.
The Gormogons intend to expand their imperial designs accordingly.
* Actually, 28,800,000 images to be precise.
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.