New Hubble Deep Space Photo Reveals Most Distant Galaxies Ever Seen

By Good News Network Friday, September 28, 2012

Earth - Science

NASA has released a new, improved portrait of mankind's deepest-ever view of the universe. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field image shows an area of space photographed over time, faint light collected over many hours of observation, containing thousands of galaxies, both nearby and very distant, making it the deepest image of the universe ever taken.

Hubble pointed at a tiny patch of southern sky in repeat visits (made over the past decade) for a total of 50 days, with a total exposure time of 2 million seconds. More than 2,000 images of the same narrow field were taken with Hubble's two premier cameras to reveal the faintest and most distant galaxies ever seen.

The universe is 13.7 billion years old, and the XDF reveals galaxies that span back 13.2 billion years in time. Most of the galaxies in the XDF are seen when they were young, small, and growing, often violently as they collided and merged together.

Magnificent spiral galaxies similar in shape to our Milky Way and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy appear in this image, as do the large, fuzzy red galaxies where the formation of new stars has ceased. These red galaxies are the remnants of dramatic collisions between galaxies and are in their declining years. Peppered across the field are tiny, faint, more distant galaxies that were like the seedlings from which today's magnificent galaxies grew. The history of galaxies -- from soon after the first galaxies were born to the great galaxies of today, like our Milky Way -- is laid out in this one remarkable image.

The Deep Field Photo (shown above, cropped) reveals about 5,500 galaxies.

(READ the full article at the source, NASA.gove)