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Hubble finds hundreds of young galaxies in the early Universe

22 September 2006

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This view of nearly 10 000 galaxies was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and it is called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. 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 thousand million years ago, when the cosmos was 13 thousand million years old.

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 24 September 2003 and 16 January 2004.

Credits: NASA/ ESA/ STScI (S. Beckwith)/ HUDF Team

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This video sequence starts with a wide-field image taken by the Japanese astrophotographer Akira Fujii and end up with the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The focus is on one of the more than 500 newly discovered young distant galaxies.

Credits: NASA, ESA, R. Bouwens, G. Illingworth (University of California, USA) and Akira Fujii

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Astronomers analyzing two of the deepest views of the cosmos made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered a gold mine of galaxies, more than 500 that existed less than a thousand million years after the Big Bang. These galaxies thrived when the cosmos was less than 7 percent of its present age (13.7 thousand million years). This sample represents the most comprehensive compilation of galaxies in the early Universe (28 are seen here), researchers said.

The galaxies appear red because of their tremendous distance from Earth. The blue light from their young stars took nearly 13 thousand million years to arrive at Earth. During the journey, the blue light was shifted to red light due to the expansion of space.

Credits: NASA, ESA, R. Bouwens and G. Illingworth (University of California, USA)

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Extracting close-ups of 28 young distant galaxies from the sample of more than 500 young distant galaxies newly discovered by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Credits: NASA, ESA, R. Bouwens and G. Illingworth (University of California, USA)

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