Hi resolution view of a section of the field.
(88K gif) Courtesy R. Williams, STScI
Med resolution view of whole field.
(100K jpg)
HDF Index
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Hi resolution view of a section of the field. (88K gif) Courtesy R. Williams, STScI
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Deepest Image YetOn January 15th, astronomers meeting in San Antonio, Texas, unveiled the deepest image ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It's actually 342 separate exposures taken over 10 consecutive days in late December 1995 and added together.Location, Size and ContentsLocated near the handle of the Big Dipper, the chosen field has a high galactic latitude and looks relatively empty through even the largest ground-based telescopes. It encompasses an area of the sky no larger than a grain of sand held at arms length. But in that 2.7 x 2.7 arcminute portion of sky, the HST uncovered more than 1,500 galaxies in both familiar and peculiar forms down to about 30th magnitude.A View back through TimeThe image is so deep that astronomers believe they are seeing galaxies during the early days of the universe, perhaps as little as a billion years after the Big Bang. They also hope it will bring answers to fundamental cosmological questions such as when galaxies first appeared and the ultimate fate of the universe. |