In 1995, astronomers pointed
the Hubble Telescope toward a seemingly empty spot in the sky. Because the
telescope was purposely directed far away from the glare produced by stars in
the Milky Way, any source of light in the resulting view had to come from galaxies.
But it was still a risky move.
"Time on this telescope
is expensive, with very long waiting lists of astronomers who want to use
it," explains DeepAstronomy.com. It was a gamble "because no one knew
what they were going to see if they did this."
For 10 days, Hubble
collected faint light from the extremely small patch of black space. This
resulting image became one of the most memorable observations in Hubble
history. It was the deepest portrait of the universe ever taken at the time. It
is the most important image ever taken.
This particular snapshot,
dubbed the Hubble Deep Field, contained the thousands of nearby and distant
galaxies. The image represents only a tiny sample of the universe, but it was
important because it gave scientists the first look at galaxies when they were
young.
Over the last two decades, the
astronomers have constructed new and better images of our deepest view of the
universe, including the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and also more recently, the
eXtreme Deep Field or XDF.
In the XDF images, assembled
in 2012, some of the most distant galaxies were around when the universe was
just 800 million years old.
The nearest galaxies are
around 1 billion years old. Astronomers believe the universe was created 13.8
billion years ago in the "Big Bang."
For more information about
the Hubble Deep Field, check out this video below from Deep Astronomy, which we
first came across at All That Is Interesting. Hubble Deep Field changed our perspective,
how we looked at universe.
Source