ToucanSam Report This Comment
Date: December 11, 2005 08:59PM

Galaxies, galaxies everywhere - as far as the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope can see. This view of nearly 10,000 galaxies is the deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, this galaxy-studded view represents a ‘deep’ core sample of the universe, cutting across billions of light-years.

The snapshot includes galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes, and colours. The smallest, reddest galaxies, about 100, may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old. The nearest galaxies - the larger, brighter, well-defined spirals and ellipticals - thrived about 1 billion years ago, when the cosmos was 13 billion years old.

In vibrant contrast to the rich harvest of classic spiral and elliptical galaxies, there is a zoo of oddball galaxies littering the field. Some look like toothpicks; others like links on a bracelet. A few appear to be interacting. These oddball galaxies chronicle a period when the universe was younger and more chaotic. Order and structure were just beginning to emerge.

The Ultra Deep Field observations, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, represent a narrow, deep view of the cosmos. Peering into the Ultra Deep Field is like looking through a 2.5 metre-long soda straw.

In ground-based photographs, the patch of sky in which the galaxies reside (just one-tenth the diameter of the full Moon) is largely empty. Located in the constellation Fornax, the region is so empty that only a handful of stars within the Milky Way galaxy can be seen in the image.

In this image, blue and green correspond to colours that can be seen by the human eye, such as hot, young, blue stars and the glow of Sun-like stars in the disks of galaxies. Red represents near-infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, such as the red glow of dust-enshrouded galaxies.

The image required 800 exposures taken over the course of 400 Hubble orbits around Earth. The total amount of exposure time was 11.3 days, taken between Sept. 24, 2003 and Jan. 16, 2004.


Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team

jgoins Report This Comment
Date: December 11, 2005 10:06PM

Out of all those countless galaxies why would we think life is only on this little planet?

90130 Report This Comment
Date: December 11, 2005 10:24PM

There are other planets with life sustaining atmospheres and intelligent beings. They're avoiding us.

Anonymous Report This Comment
Date: December 11, 2005 11:11PM

If I were them, I'd be avoiding us too...

shaDEz Report This Comment
Date: December 11, 2005 11:25PM

it all comes crashing in again
big pulse instead of big bang
and how many time has this already occoured?
fuuuuuck they're fuckin' with me again
i must must escape them
the Absu the Absu fuck! i'm drowning!
they are coming for me

ToucanSam Report This Comment
Date: December 12, 2005 12:14AM

..big pulse...? Check out "string theory",, go ahead type it in to google.

shaDEz Report This Comment
Date: December 12, 2005 02:14AM

well sort of like string...
not really what i'm sayin'
although string involves many different, yet simuliar theories

fossil_digger Report This Comment
Date: December 12, 2005 03:13AM

that bright orange one in the center is my home....i've come for your women to repopulate our dying planet.

shaDEz Report This Comment
Date: December 12, 2005 07:51PM

aight, after watching this whole three hour documentary
[www.pbs.org]
i have decided that i am wanting to cunduct a little expirement
it will require six people and some really good acid
1 mechanic, 1 physist, 1 chemist, 1 philosopher, and two dumb asse to act as moderators
everyone needs to be tripping except for one of the two moderators (i can be the fucked up mod)
then we can spend the next eight to six-teen hours discussing/argueing about the everything
i would really like to see this done
to see what (if anything at all) would come out of this

Anonymous Report This Comment
Date: December 13, 2005 01:11AM

I see God! No wait....it's only Waldo.

Anonymous Report This Comment
Date: March 10, 2006 02:46PM

wheres the pic?