Hubble Extreme Deep Field

The Hubble Extreme Deep Field (XDF) combines 10 years of Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a small patch of sky at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field. About 5,500 galaxies are visible in this image in various stages of evolution. Since light takes time to travel across the vast cosmos, many of these galaxies are seen as they were in the early history of the universe. The universe is 13.7 billion years old, and this image spans 13.2 billion years of galaxy development. The farthest galaxy found in the Hubble Extreme Deep Field existed just 450 million years after the Big Bang. To create this image, Hubble revisited the same patch of sky over a decade for a total of 50 days. More than 2,000 images of the same spot in the constellation Fornax were taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3 instruments, then combined. For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2012/news-2012-37.html