Posted: Tue, Mar 9, 2004, 7:54 PM ET (0054 GMT)
Astronomers released Tuesday a new Hubble image that peers farther into the universe, and deeper into its past, than any previous view. The Ultra Deep Field is a combination of images taken by Hubble's ACS and NICMOS instruments, representing a total of one million seconds of observations of the a region the sky just one-tenth the size of the Moon between September 2003 and January 2004. The image contains about 10,000 galaxies, including some that date back to perhaps as early as 400 million years after the Big Bang. If true it would make those galaxies the oldest ever seen, and may offer clues to how the universe evolved within the first billion years after the Big Bang. The release of the Ultra Deep Field comes less than two months after NASA decided to cancel the final shuttle servicing mission to Hubble, and astronomers and other Hubble advocates used the occasion of the release to lobby Congress and NASA to restore the mission or otherwise work to keep Hubble operational.
