The Hubble Extreme Deep
Field
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
What did the first
galaxies look like? To help answer this question, the Hubble Space Telescope
has just finished taking the eXtreme Deep
Field (XDF), the deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light.
Pictured below, the XDF shows a sampling of some of the oldest galaxies ever seen, galaxies that formed just after the dark ages, 13 billion years ago, when the universe was
only a few percent of its present age.
The Hubble Space Telescope's ACS camera and the infrared channel of
the WFPC3 camera took the image. Combining efforts spread over 10 years, the XDF is more sensitive, in some colors, than
the original Hubble Deep Field (HDF), the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) completed in 2004, and the HUDF Infrared completed in 2009.
Astronomers the world over will likely
study the XDF for years to come to better understand how
stars and galaxies formed in the early universe.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch (UCSC), R. Bouwens (Leiden Obs.), and the XDF Team
