The most important photograph ever taken

For about 4 months starting September 2003, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) was composed from the Hubble Space Telescope, the deepest image of the universe ever taken, looking back about 13 billion years.

Some have described it in superlatives eg:

- the most important image humanity has ever taken
- the image of a millennium
- a humbling image: shows exactly how insignificantly small we are and how big the universe actually is
- anyone who understands what this image represents is forever changed by it

The telescope was pointed at a point in the sky equivalent to less than a 1mm x 1mm blob held 1 metre away; that is a tenth the diameter of the full moon as seen from Earth or one thirteen-millionth of the total area of the sky.

The point in the sky was selected due to its relative emptiness – eg, no stars visible, so that nothing from our galaxy, the Milky Way, blocks the view, so to speak.

The following is a photo with the region of sky selected i.e. the L-shaped outline:

The resulting image was astounding, for it demonstrated that “by looking at a patch of sky that appears to have nothing in it, and you stare at it long enough, you see an image full of galaxies.”

10,000 visible galaxies, in fact. Every single point of light in the picture was sure to be a galaxy: