Chandra Deep Field South

The Chandra Deep Field South, observed in the U-, B-, and R-bands with ESO's VIMOS and WFI instruments.

Three-colour composite image of the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S) , obtained with the Wide Field Imager (WFI) camera on the 2.2-m MPG/ESO telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory (Chile).

The Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S) is an image taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory satellite. The image is centered on RA 3^h 32^m 28.0^s DEC -27° 48′ 30″ (J2000.0), covering 0.11 square degrees, measuring 16 arcminutes across. This patch of sky lies in the Fornax constellation.^[1][2]

The image was created by compositing 11 individual ACIS-I exposures for a cumulative exposure time of over one million seconds, in the period 1999-2000, by a team led by Riccardo Giacconi.^[1] This region was selected for observation because it has much less galactic gas and dust to obscure distant sources.^[2]

Multispectral observations of the region were carried out in collaboration with the Very Large Telescope and the Paranal Observatory. Through the course of these investigations, the X-ray background was determined to originated from the central supermassive black holes of distant galaxies, and a better characterization of Type-II Quasars was obtained. ^{[Note 1]} The CDFS discovered over 300 X-ray sources, many of them from "low luminosity" AGN lying about 9 billion light years away. The study also discovered the then most distant Quasar 2, lying at redshift z=3.7 , some 12 billion light years away.^[2]

Notes

1. ^ Type-2 Quasars, or Quasar2's are quasars that are deeply embedded in dust and gas, from our point of view

References

• NASA PR 01-37 "Deepest X-Rays Ever Reveal universe Teeming With Black Holes" March 13, 2001 (accessed 10 October 2009)

Citations

1. ^ ^{a b} ESO, "The Chandra Deep Field South" (accessed 10 October 2009)
2. ^ ^{a b c} ESO Press Release 05/01 "Chandra and the VLT Jointly Investigate the Cosmic X-Ray Background" 13 March 2001 (accessed 10 October 2009)

External links

• A Pool of Distant Galaxies – the deepest ultraviolet image of the Universe yet – ESO Photo Release
• APOD Chandra Deep Field South

See also

• Hubble Deep Field South
• List of Deep Fields

Coordinates: 03^h 32^m 28.0 ^s, −27° 48′ 30 ″