Hubble Legacy Field

The most incredible image ever produced by the Hubble telescope or potentially in general by anything was revealed recently. It is an image of various galaxies and stars that create a stunning and beautiful view of the night skies. However, what exactly is this image? Moreover, what does it represent and why is it absolutely mindblowing?

Firstly, this is an image that was recently reconstructed using Hubble data. Nonetheless, to understand the creation of this image, we will have to go back 24 years to 1995. The story begins here when scientists decided to see how much they could push Hubble. Thus, they decided to stare at the same spot for about ten days and recorded all of the data. All this data was reconstructed in a single image known as the Hubble Deep Field. This image was the epithet of Hubble’s possibilities and its potentials of seeing far away. It was essentially an image that showed us a very dark time, billions of years ago. It was a look into the universe’s history.

Nevertheless, the scientists were not satisfied with that just yet and they decided to push it further. Hence, for a few decades, scientists have kept pushing it more and more, looking at different locations and discovering new things with this incredible telescope. This was back in 1995 and since then, over 20 years have passed; we have collected tons of data from Hubble.

This is when scientists decided to create something new. They decided to combine all of the data from the decades and focus on a single spot in the skies. They have picked a location in the skies that were approximately the same size as the full moon. Then, by combining all the data including ultraviolet, infrared, and x-ray data into a single image, they were able to create this new image with 7,500 different exposures. The image actually represents 31 different Hubble programs that were initiated over a period of about 16 years. Overall, this whole image was almost as if we looked at the same spot for about eight months!