A stunning new composite photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope, made up of more than 2,000 images shot by multiple cameras over the past 10 years and combined in what amounts to a 23-day time exposure, shows some 5,500 galaxies in tiny field of view, including some dating back to just 450 million years after the big bang birth of the universe, astronomers said Tuesday.
Dubbed the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photograph represents the deepest view of the universe yet achieved, giving astronomers a "time tunnel"-like glimpse back across 13.2 billion years of cosmic history.
The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, made up of some 2,000 images taken over a decade, provides a stunning "time tunnel" capturing light from dim proto galaxies within 500 million years of the big bang.
(Credit: NASA)
"The XDF is the deepest image of the sky ever obtained and reveals the faintest and most distant galaxies ever seen," Garth Illingworth, a Hubble researcher at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said in a NASA statement. "XDF allows us to explore further back in time than ever before."
Earlier observations of pulsating Cepheid variable stars in remote galaxies allowed Hubble astronomers to conclude the universe is roughly 13.7 billion years old. The XDF photograph represents a look back across time from the present to within 450 million years of the big bang, showing the broad spec... [Read more]
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