Hubble ultra deep field image – click for large version from Hubblesite.
Contributed by: evilscientist
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is an amazing instrument. Though only a 2m telescope, it's vantage point above the atmosphere allows it to take amazing pictures that larger ground based instruments are only now beginning to provide thanks to adaptive optics. The image below was taken by Hubble in August. It is an ultra-deep field image, that is one where the Hubble was told to basically stare at a small chunk of the sky for a long, long time. This allowed it to take images of very, very faint objects, in this case galaxies deep into space. In fact, the faintest red galaxies in the image are only about 600 million years older than the universe itself. That puts them between 12 and 13 billion light years away!
Hubble ultra deep field image – click for large version from Hubblesite.
The science from this should be amazing! Early galaxy formation is still an area of active research and images such as this provide valuable insight into the early universe.
Evilness
http://www.evilscientist.ca/article.php?story=20091208220956844