A new, improved portrait of Hubble’s deepest-ever view of the universe, called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, looks far away and back in time to reveal faint galaxies at one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see. This is the culmination of 10 years of observing a patch of sky that contains thousands of far-flung galaxies. The full-color XDF image shows previously unseen galaxies as they looked in the early universe, billions of years ago.
Astronomers continue studying this area of sky with Hubble. Extensive ongoing observing programs, led by Harry Teplitz and Richard Ellis at the California Institute of Technology, will allow astronomers to study the deep-field galaxies with Hubble to even greater depths in ultraviolet and infrared light prior to the launch of JWST. These new results will provide even more extraordinary views of this region of the sky and will be shared with the public in the coming months.
Viewers participated in an online webinar and heard three key astronomers of the XDF observing team describe how they assembled the landmark observation. They illustrated and explained what Hubble’s powerful new view tells us about the evolving universe.