The Universe Is Beautiful in This New Hubble Image

There are 10,000 galaxies in the image above—a beautiful composite of pictures taken by the Hubble from 2003-2012. The galaxies, which look like jewels set against the black backdrop of space, were captured by two different cameras—the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which are capable of detecting ultraviolet light. 

The addition of ultraviolet light kicks everything up a notch. With the addition of the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, this image goes well beyond the range of galaxies captured in the previous Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image, released in 2009. 

It turns out that scientists using visible light and near-infrared light could see star formation in galaxies that were relatively close to us, and those at the greatest distances. But that left out a large portion in the middle.

From a Hubble news release:

 But for the period in between, when most of the stars in the universe were born — a distance extending from about 5 billion to 10 billion light-years — they did not have enough data.

"The lack of information from ultraviolet light made studying galaxies in the HUDF like trying to understand the history of families without knowing about the grade-school children," said principal investigator Harry Teplitz of Caltech in Pasadena, California. "The addition of the ultraviolet fills in this missing range."

Also, it just looks really cool. 

Mary Beth Griggs | | READ MORE

Mary Beth Griggs is a freelance science journalist based in New York City.