NASA 3D-DASH

2022: The largest snapshot of the universe is obtained. Photo

On June 6, 2022, an international team of scientists released the largest near-infrared image ever taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, allowing astronomers to map the star-forming regions of the universe and learn how the earliest and farthest galaxies were born.

Dubbed 3D-DASH, the program provides a high-resolution view and will allow researchers to find rare objects and targets for follow-up observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on its decade-long mission.

Since its launch more than 30 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope has led a renaissance in studying how galaxies have changed over the last 10 billion years of the universe, says Lamia Moula, a postdoctoral fellow at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics in the University of Toronto's Department of Arts and Science, and lead author of the study. The 3D-DASH program continues the legacy of Hubble in the field of wide-zone shooting, thanks to which we can begin to solve the mysteries of galaxies outside our planet.

3D-DASH provides researchers with a full near-infrared survey as part of the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) program, which focuses on extragalactic research outside the Milky Way.

I am interested in learning about monster galaxies, which are the most massive in the universe and formed from the merger of other galaxies. How did their structures grow, and what contributed to the change in their shape? Moula says. It was difficult to study these extremely rare events with existing images, which led me to create this big study.

To get an image of such a vast area of ​ ​ the sky, the researchers applied a new technique for working with Hubble, known as Drift And SHift (DASH). DASH creates an image eight times the standard Hubble field of view by taking multiple shots, which are then stitched together into a single mosaic, similar to taking panoramic photos on a smartphone.

DASH also takes pictures faster than conventional technology, taking eight shots in one Hubble orbit instead of one, reaching in 250 hours what would have taken about 2,000 hours before.

3D-DASH covers a total area nearly six times the size of the moon visible from Earth. It is the largest near-infrared image of the sky available for study by astronomers until a new generation of telescopes, such as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and Euclid, are launched in the next decade.^[1]

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