Keeping Up With the Latest (Mind Blowing) Thing

The other day I posted the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image, which, as of 2004, was the deepest image of the universe ever taken.

Check out a new image posted March 23 on EarthSky.

Image credit: UltraVISTA/Terapix/CNRS/CASU 

Have a look at the most detailed infrared image ever taken of a region of space large enough to be representative of the distant universe. The image, from the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) VISTA telescope, reveals more than 200,000 galaxies, including the most distant seen to date in the early universe. These objects formed less than one billion years after the Big Bang. The new image was made by combining more than six thousand separate images – equivalent to an exposure time of 55 hours.

The large white objects with haloes are foreground stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy. A host of other galaxies can be seen, from relatively nearby galaxies which appear large enough to discern their structures, to the most distant galaxies, which appear as red dots in this image.

Click here for a BIG UltraVISTA image. Makes a killer desk top.