Cosmic archaeology: Astrophysicists use new spectrographs to look far back into the history of the universe
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 15:56
in Astronomy & Space
(PhysOrg.com) -- The distant past of the universe is moving closer. Astronomers are using special spectrographs to investigate galaxies in the depths of the universe as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. The instruments are very sensitive to infrared light and can even detect very distant galaxies whose light is shifted towards the long-wavelength, red region of the spectrum as a result of the cosmic expansion. The astrophysicists hope that the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) will record the spectra of 1.4 million galaxies and 160,000 quasars by 2014.