Ground-Based Telescope Obtained Deepest Galaxy Photo From Earth

For the first time, a ground-based telescope in La Palma managed to take an image 10 times deeper than any known telescope operating from Earth. The image shows faint halos of stars surrounding neighboring galaxies.

This is considered a feat due to the fact that the light reaching the Earth, which is emanating from distant galaxies, are extremely faint, thus making it harder to capture. The low contrast background makes it more difficult to analyze the image.

The Instituto De Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) conducted a study to test how far the car the largest optical-infrared telescope can reach. Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC), located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma, Canary Islands, managed to produce an image that is 10 times deeper compared to any other ground-based telescope on Earth.

The faint halo of stars around galaxy UGC0180 was captured by the GTC, according to a report by Phys.Org. The distance of the subject is approximately 500 million light years away.

Because of this achievement, it is now proven that the study of celestial bodies within low brightness area in the universe is possible. The low surface brightness of nearby galaxies and its halos, make it difficult to capture and study them, but it was now proven that it can be done.

According to the study, they used the OSIRIS camera on the GTC to capture the image; but not without difficulty. They waited for 8.1 hours of exposure to determine that there were faint halos surrounding galaxy UGC018 composed of millions of stars which is also 200 times further away than Andromeda galaxy.

The study was published in Astrophysical Journal. The result of the study not only becomes the deepest image captured by the largest ground-based telescope, but it was also able to increase the brightness limit to up to ten times and also increased the depth and distance of observation that man wasn't able to reach before.

The study also claims that through this technique, more studies can be conducted in areas where there are no stars or of with faint brightness.

"After showing that the technique works, the object of future research is to extend the study to other types of galaxies, to see whether this way of understanding their formation, predicted by the standard model, is correct or not," said Ignacio Trujillo, a researcher at the IAC and of the study, in an interview with Eureka.