Tuesday, March 09, 2004

A LOOK AT THE BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE: This galaxy-studded view represents a "deep" core sample of the universe, cutting across billions of light-years. The snapshot includes galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes, and colors. The smallest, reddest galaxies, about 100, may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old. The nearest galaxies -- the larger, brighter, well-defined spirals and ellipticals -- thrived 1 billion years ago, when the cosmos was 13 billion years old. In vibrant contrast to the rich harvest of classic spiral and elliptical galaxies, there is a zoo of oddball galaxies littering the field. Some look like toothpicks; others like links on a bracelet. A few appear to be interacting. These oddball galaxies chronicle a period when the universe was younger and more chaotic. Order and structure were just beginning to emerge. The Ultra Deep Field observations began Sept. 24, 2003 and continued through Jan. 16, 2004. The telescope's ACS camera, the size of a phone booth, captured ancient photons of light that began traversing the universe even before Earth existed. Photons of light from the very faintest objects arrived at a trickle of one photon per minute, compared with millions of photons per minute from nearer galaxies. Just like the previous Hubble Deep Fields, the new data are expected to galvanize the astronomical community and lead to dozens of research papers that will offer new insights into the birth and evolution of galaxies. 8:16:43 PM    comment []

Latham raids Skadden for three-partner debt finance team Latham & Watkins has raided the New York office of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom for a three-partner debt finance team. Marc Hanrahan, Ronan Wicks and Marcus Dougherty have joined the Latham’s New York office as partners. Hanrahan, Wicks and Dougherty focus their practice on representing banks and other financial institutions in senior lending transactions. "We expect Marc Hanrahan to be a leader in our leveraged finance group and in our firm as a whole," said Latham’s New York managing partner David Gordon. Hanrahan and his team advise lenders on syndicated loans, leveraged buyout financings, tender offer financings, going-private transactions, acquisition financings, telecom buildouts, project financings and other general financings. The team will help Latham build its relationships with a number of its institutional clients such as CIBC, Credit Suisse First Boston. 8:14:10 PM    comment []