Hubble sees oldest galaxies yet
Date: 07 December 2009
Satellite: Hubble Space Telescope
Depicts: Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) Infrared
Copyright: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory and the University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (UCO/Lick Observatory and Leiden University) and the HUDF09 Team
In 2004, Hubble created the deepest visible-light image of the Universe and now, with its brand-new camera, Hubble is seeing even farther in the same region. Hubble's newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) collects light from near-infrared wavelengths and therefore looks even deeper, because the light from hot young stars in very distant galaxies is stretched out of the ultraviolet and visible regions of the spectrum into near-infrared wavelengths by the expansion of the Universe. The new deep view also provides insights into how galaxies grew in their formative years early in the Universe's history.
This image is a composite of separate exposures made by the WFC3 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Three filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges in the near-infrared. The colour results from assigning different colours to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colours are: F105W (Y) blue, F125W (J) green and F160 (H) red.
The image is roughly 2.4 arcminutes wide.
