Saturday 25 June 2011

redshift - Why are there so many seemingly blue-shifted galaxies in deep space

You cannot gauge the redshift of a galaxy by looking at a false colour image. The images taken through different filters are stacked and colourised to suit. You can say that the blue galaxies are indeed bluer than the red galaxies, but there is no absolute scale with which to judge redshift by eye.



Secondly, there is no detail in the NASA web page, but the ACS and WFC3 cameras have near infrared capabilities. So I would think that this image is a visual false-colour image of information that extends well redward of what the eye can perceive. So even the things that look blue might have a spectrum that peaks at redder wavelengths, whilst anything that looks red might actually be infrared!



However, beyond this, in order to judge what the redshifted appearance of a galaxy would be, you would need to know what the galaxy looked like with zero redshift. That is, light that is emitted in the ultraviolet could be redshifted into the visible part of the spectrum. It is entirely possible that visual colour of a redshifted galaxy would not change very much at all if the galaxy emitted lots of UV light in its frame of reference or equally, if it emitted lots of very red light that was then redshifted out of the telescope's sensitivity range.



Finally, there could be some genuine astrophysics going on. Many distant galaxies are bluer than nearby galaxies because they are undergoing intense star formation. Massive star forming regions emit copious UV light that is redshifted into the optical.



Finally, finally! Many of the galaxies in the picture will be quite close and will not be very redshifted.

No comments:

Post a Comment