eXtreme View of the Universe

NASA has released an image, called the eXtreme Deep Field, which pieces together more than 2,000 photographs taken over the last 10 years by the Hubble Space Telescope. The photograph shows the deepest reaches of the universe as we have never seen before.

The telescope observed a very small patch of sky over a long period of time in order to collect light from very distant galaxies. The total exposure time of the photograph is two million seconds, and it reveals some 5,500 faraway galaxies.

NASA says, “The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see.”

The deeper into the universe we look, the farther back in time we see. The galaxies on the outermost edge of the universe are the ones created the longest ago. The universe is 13.7 billion years old; XDF shows galaxies that are about 13.2 billion years old.

eXtreme Deep Field, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope