NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is a space-based observatory, launched in 1990 and named after astronomer Edwin Hubble. Because it is far above Earth’s atmosphere, it has a fantastically clear view of the universe and since its deployment it has enabled scientists to observe distant stars and galaxies – looking far beyond time and far into space.
In 2003, Hubble captured images of a tiny portion of the sky (approximately 10,000 galaxies), with 800 exposures taken over 11.3 days, known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (or HUDF). In January 2021, the Hubble team posted a video on its You Tube Channel saying: “This six-minute visual exploration of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field showcases the characteristics and contents of this landmark observation, as well as its three-dimensional nature across both space and time. In particular, galaxies are seen to more than 12 billion light-years away / 12 billion years ago, allowing astronomers to trace the development of galaxies across cosmic time.”
(The Story of the Universe in a Picture)
The video sequence showcases the three-dimensional model of the UDF data set, using more than 5000 galaxies. It enables viewers to picture galaxies and stars in the HUDF, separated from each other by millions or billions of lightyears.
This is an amazing look deep into our Universe, across billions of lightyears of time, almost to its birth.
Visualization: Frank Summers, Alyssa Pagan, Leah Hustak, Greg Bacon, Zolt Levay, Lisa Frattare (STScI) Data: Anton Koekemoer, Bahram Mobasher, and HUDF Team, NASA
Music: “Autumn: Meditativo” by Dee Yan-Key CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Saima Baig
I am a Chartered Environmentalist from the Royal Society for the Environment, UK and co-owner of DoLocal Digital Marketing Agency Ltd, with a Master of Environmental Management from Yale University, an MBA in Finance, and a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Mathematics. I am passionate about science, history and environment and love to create content on these topics.
