Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth and R. Bouwens (University of California, Santa Cruz), and the HUDF09 Team

This is the deepest image of the universe ever taken in near-infrared light by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The faintest and reddest objects in the image are galaxies that correspond to "look-back times" of approximately 12.9 billion years to 13.1 billion years ago. These galaxies are much smaller than the Milky Way galaxy and have populations of stars that are intrinsically very blue. This may indicate the galaxies are so primordial that they are deficient in heavier elements, and as a result, are quite free of the dust that reddens light through scattering. This HST image required four days of pointing for 173,000 seconds of exposure time. Infrared light is invisible and therefore does not have colors that can be perceived by the human eye. The colors in the image are assigned comparatively short, medium, and long near-infrared wavelengths (blue, 1.05 microns; green, 1.25 microns; and red, 1.6 microns). The representation is "natural" in that blue objects appear blue and red objects look red. The faintest objects are about one-billionth as bright as can be seen with the naked eye.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2010/news-2010-02

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image Use Policy: http://hubblesite.org/copyright/