Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014

NASA ^ | June 05, 2014 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: Galaxies like colorful pieces of candy fill the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014. The dimmest galaxies are more than 10 billion times fainter than stars visible to the unaided eye and represent the Universe in the extreme past, a few 100 million years after the Big Bang. The image itself was made with the significant addition of ultraviolet data to the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, an update of Hubble's famous most distant gaze toward the southern constellation of Fornax. It now covers the entire range of wavelengths available to Hubble's cameras, from ultraviolet through visible to near-infrared. Ultraviolet data adds the crucial capability of studying star formation in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field galaxies between 5 and 10 billion light-years distant.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: NASA, ESA, H.Teplitz and M.Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst(ASU), Z. Levay (STScI)]

[SunkenCiv]

The big version is pretty, and pretty neat.

The Big One

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[Adder]

Totally awesome...and amazing.

[ComputerGuy]

As they say on TV, every speck you see is another galaxy.

[Slambat]

Looks a lot like Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2013.

[dayglored]

Starting my day by viewing the HUD... bound to be a great one! God’s Creation is so magnificent, so utterly beyond my comprehension... really puts whatever tasks and problems I may face in perspective. Thank you!!

[COBOL2Java]

As they say on TV, every speck you see is another galaxy.

Wonder if they have any liberals...

[The Antiyuppie]

Although you can look at this image, and recognize what it is, the content itself is literally beyond human ability to imagine.

[TheOldLady]

What is this lovely and unique little thing in the lower right corner?

[FatherofFive]

a few 100 million years after the Big Bang

I still cannot understand how all matter comes from a point in space.

Amazing picture.

[VaRepublican]

ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO
LANDING THERE

[Hebrews 11:6]

There are actually three stars visible in the image which are in the immediate foreground and reside in our Milky Way galaxy: the one highlighted by Lady and two more in the upper-left. They're distinguishable by the spikes associated with them, which are camera artifacts. Every other object is a distant galaxy.

Astronomers selected this portion of the sky for their very long exposure precisely because of the near-total absence of intervening objects. Its point was to discover just how many very faint and distant galaxies really exist. Every tiny faint color-spot is an entire galaxy, averaging two hundred billion stars each!

[TheOldLady]

Ah... So. Thank you for pointing the other two out. I was so dazzled by the one
I posted that I stopped looking for others.

So there is a “little” window through which we are able to see all those galaxies
out there, but the rainbow lens effects are from stars much closer to home here.

Again, thank you.

[Hebrews 11:6]

I still cannot understand how all matter comes from a point in space.

What seems incomprehensible about that? Of course, there is nothing even remotely similar in our personal experiences, but we grasp things all the time that we haven't gone through ourselves.

In roughest terms, imagine a grenade exploding, with its contents radiating out in an expanding sphere.

So, what's troubling? Its improbability? Its immensity? How all space and matter could begin in an infinitesimally small volume? The fact that a seemingly highly-ordered universe is its result?

[Hebrews 11:6]

Thanks for posting. Surely this remains as the single most wonderful photograph ever taken, and its enhancements keep making it even better!

[Hebrews 11:6]

A logical next question might be, why do the three stars have camera spikes while the much more distant galaxies do not? I'm no expert, but I presume the answer lies in the photographic method. In order to capture the few photons reaching us from the very faintest galaxies (the faint pinpricks of light you see in-between all the obvious large galaxies), astronomers trained the Hubble Space Telescope on this patch of sky and left the lens open for ten days. The objects at galactic range would show no apparent movement at all, but nearby stars might--all the Milky Way stars, including our sun, are rotating around the galactic center. So, my uninformed guess is that those camera spikes are registering slight star movement.

[FatherofFive]

How all space and matter could begin in an infinitesimally small volume?

This is it. I don't understand the physics.

In my small mind, the 'Big Bang' was either:
1. a 'leak' from another dimension
2. the finger of God

[FatherofFive]

the content itself is literally beyond human ability to imagine

Agreed. I am in awe. I've read Hawkings, 'A brief history of time' but it never get to how much matter can be compressed to a singularity.

[dsc]

“10 billion light-years”

Just a second, let me wrap my mind around the concept of ten billion light years.

There, got it.

Everybody believes me, right?

[dsc]

“So, what’s troubling?”

Where did it come from?