The Hubble Space Telescope is proving that good things come to those who wait.
It just produced the deepest look at the universe ever made by “staring” at the same tiny patch of sky for more than 500 hours spread out over the past ten years. The result includes not only breathtaking views of nearby galaxies in the prime of life, but the most distant galaxies ever seen, born in the first 450 million years following the Big Bang (that may sound like a lot to we puny humans, but compare that number to the age of the universe: 13.7 billion years).
Hubble created the image, called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, by layering more than 2,000 images taken by its two cameras: Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3. And the result is a group photo of more than 5,500 galaxies.
You can get a closer look on Hubble’s website.
Want to learn more about the XDF? Hubble’s observation team will be hosting a webinar tomorrow at 12pm CT to talk about how the XDF was made and what it reveals about the universe.