Image Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch (UCSC), R. Bouwens (Leiden Obs.), and the XDF Team
Explanation: 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 above, 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.
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