This image of the familiar M51 Whirlpool Galaxy is just the beginning of a new, massive survey scanning the sky in infrared light.

A team of British astronomers are conducting the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) with the world’s most powerful infrared survey camera. Known as the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM), the imager pulled its first images from the UK infrared camera (UKIRT) atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii on June 24, 2005.

UKIDSS consists of five separate surveys, three of which will scan some of the furthest visible regions of the universe to study its distant past. The two other surveys will examine regions within our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

Astronomers hope the UKIDSS study will help them understand the earliest conditions of the universe and identify the 'epoch of reionization' – a period when the first galaxies and quasars began to shine, ending a time astronomers call the 'dark ages'. They believe that this happened about 750 million years after the Big Bang, but want to pinpoint the time by finding the earliest possible quasars. By studying them, the astronomers hope to refine our understanding of how galaxies formed.

-- SPACE.com Staff

Credit: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit