NASA is called it the most interesting image ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope—and the most comprehensive. It is one of the most remarkable.
But the image—the amazing payoff of a new study called the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field—is more than just beautiful. It also support to fill in some holes in our knowledge of how stars form.
Earlier accounts of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field captured wavelengths of light from visible and near-infrared as well as the far-ultraviolet (UV). But near-ultraviolet light wasn’t exposed nearly as well. When you add the UV light, you get quite a fantastic view.
And what an incredible view it is! The new image, a false-color compiling of shots captured during the passage of 841 orbits of Hubble between 2003 and 2012, contains approximately 10,000 galaxies in a massive variety of shapes and sizes.
Astronomer Phil Plait wrote on Slate:
“The galaxies show every possible shape and size, astronomer. Many are distorted, victims of collisions with other galaxies, their mutual gravity pulling them into weird shapes like taffy quadrillions of kilometers across. Many are very blue, showing active star formation, while others are exceedingly red, probably galaxies much farther away, and their light taking far longer to reach us. Note that most of the very red galaxies are smaller dots, another indication of their tremendous distance.”
Named after astronomer Edwin Hubble, the Hubble Space Telescope is a venture of NASA and the European Space Agency. It was launched in 1990 and has been wowing us ever since.