Spitzer Telescope finds the beginning of time

[rlb2]

Here is something odd about the way the new NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope image looks –see below, then see an enlarged section below that I sharpened and brightened, you can see more light.<br /><br /><br /><font color="orange">The right panel is an image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of stars and galaxies in the Ursa Major constellation. This infrared image covers a region of space so large that light would take up to 100 million years to travel across it. The left panel is the same image after stars, galaxies and other sources were masked out. The remaining background light is from a period of time when the universe was less than one billion years old, and most likely originated from the universe's very first groups of objects -- either huge stars or voracious black holes. Darker shades in the image on the left correspond to dimmer parts of the background glow, while yellow and white show the brightest light.<br /><br />http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/firststars-20061218.html<br /><br />http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/165396main_spitzer-firststars-20061218.jpg<br /><br /><font color="white"><br />What is your take on this???<br /></font></font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Ron Bennett </div>

 

[rlb2]

I sharpened, brightened and added more contrast in this section from the above image....<br /><br />165396spitzer-firststars- <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Ron Bennett </div>

 

[silylene old]

I remember seeing this from Spitzer too.<br /><br />At the time my opinion was that the "background light" was nothing more than diffracted and scattered light from the bright point sources. Your "brightened/contrasted image" makes me think my initial opinion was right.<br /><br />I would like to see a pixel-by-pixel 2-dimensional pairwise statistical analysis of proximity effects to see if there is correlation between proximity to bright point source and "background light", and whether the background light is independent of the point sources. Until then I do think that the Spitzer team conclusion has a higher bogacity than I am comfortable with. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>