A University of Pittsburgh astronomer is a key member of an international team that will use the Hubble Space Telescope to peer through time and space to witness galaxy formation that occurred a mere 600 million years after the Big Bang.

Jeffrey A. Newman, professor of physics and astronomy, is working to determine the size and shape of spaces in five spots in the sky where the Hubble will be aimed. Over the next two to three years, the Hubble will take 250,000 images of galaxy formation as early as 13 billion years ago and throughout the earliest third of cosmic time.

Dr. Newman is part of a team assembled by Sandra M. Faber of the University of California Santa Cruz that will use the Hubble for 3 1/2 months -- the longest period of time the telescope ever has been devoted to a single project.

As part of the Hubble Multi-Cycle Treasury Program, the project involves more than 100 investigators from universities worldwide. Images will be released as soon as they are processed so teams can begin analysis and produce studies to determine whether primeval galaxies formed independently or in galactic nurseries.

Other important goals of the project involve documenting the earliest formation of super-massive black holes to determine their role in galaxy formation and whether they developed at the beginning or much later in the evolution of galaxies. The project also will observe distant supernovas to determine how dark energy accelerates expansion of the universe. The first images should be available by the end of the year.

A primary goal of the project is better understanding of the birth of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and how the sun developed 4.5 billion years ago.

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