Hubble eXtreme Deep Field Postcard

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) is an image of a small part of space in the center of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field within the constellation Fornax, showing the deepest optical view in space. Released on September 25, 2012, it took 10 years to compile the images and shows galaxies from 13.2 billion years ago. The exposure time was two million seconds, or approximately 23 days. The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see. The red galaxies are the remnants of galaxies after major collisions during their elderly years. Many of the smaller galaxies are very young galaxies that eventually became the major galaxies, like the Milky Way and other galaxies in our galactic neighborhood. The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, adds another 5,500 galaxies to Hubble's 2003 and 2004 view into a tiny patch of the farthest universe. This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 Team.