Hubble's Deepest-Ever View of the Universe Unveils Myriad Galaxies Back to the Beginning of Time

Several hundred never before seen galaxies are visible in this"deepest-ever" view of the universe, called the Hubble Deep Field(HDF), made with NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Besides the classicalspiral and elliptical shaped galaxies, there is a bewildering varietyof other galaxy shapes and colours that are important clues tounderstanding the evolution of the universe. Some of the galaxies mayhave formed less that one billion years after the Big Bang.

Representing a narrow "keyhole" view all the way to the visiblehorizon of the universe, the HDF image covers a speck of sky 1/30th thediameter of the full Moon (about 25% of the entire HDF is shown here).This is so narrow, just a few foreground stars in our Milky Way galaxyare visible and are vastly outnumbered by the menagerie of far moredistant galaxies, some nearly as faint as 30th magnitude, or nearlyfour billion times fainter than the limits of human vision. (Therelatively bright object with diffraction spikes just left of centermay be a 20th magnitude star.) Though the field is a very small sampleof sky area it is considered representative of the typical distributionof galaxies in space because the universe, statistically, looks thesame in all directions.