astronomers in 1996 attempted to do
something extraordinary they pointed the
hubble space telescope into a part of
the sky that seemed utterly empty a
patch devoid of any planets stars and
galaxies this area was close to the Big
Dipper a very familiar constellation and
the patch of sky was no bigger than a
grain of sand held out at arm's length
this was a somewhat risky move by the
scientists after all observing time on
this telescope is in very high demand
and some questioned whether it would be
wasted trying to look at nothing there
was a real risk that the images returned
would be as black as the space at which
it was being pointed nevertheless they
opened the telescope and slowly over the
course of 10 full days photons that had
been traveling for over 13 billion years
finally into their journey on the
detector of humanity's most powerful
telescope their feeble signals collected
almost one by one when the telescope was
finally closed and the images were
processed the light from over 3,000
galaxies had covered the detector
producing one of the most profound and
humbling images in all of human history
every single spot smear and dot was an
entire galaxy and each one containing
hundreds of billions of stars
later in 2004 they did it again this
time pointing the telescope towards an
area near the constellation Orion they
opened the shutter for over 11 days and
400 complete orbits around the earth
using detectors with increased
sensitivity and filters that allowed
more light through than ever before over
ten thousand galaxies appeared in what
became known as the Ultra Deep Field an
image that represented the farthest
we've ever seen into the universe the
photons from these galaxies left when
the universe was only 500 million years
old and 13 billion years later they end
their long journey as a small blip on a
telescope CCD these galaxies while
standing absolutely still are racing
away from us in some cases faster than
the speed of light the space-time
between us and everything else grows
larger by the minute
pushing the galaxies in this image to a
distance of over 47 billion light years
and because of universal expansion the
farther something is away from us the
more its light has shifted toward the
red and the faster it appears to be
moving Edwin Hubble himself discovered
this by measuring the redshift of many
galaxies and it's a measure of not only
speed but distance as well recently
Hubble scientists put the icing on the
cake using the measured red chips of all
the galaxies inside the image they made
a 3d model of the Ultra Deep Field this
is how it looks when we apply the
distances of the galaxies in the most
important image ever taken
there are over 100 billion galaxies in
the universe simply saying that number
doesn't really mean much to us because
it doesn't provide any context our
brains have no way to accurately put
that in any meaningful perspective when
we look at this image however and think
about the context of how it was made and
really understand what it means we
instantly gain the perspective and
cannot help but be forever changed by it
we pointed the most powerful telescope
ever built by human beings at absolutely
nothing for no other reason than because
we were curious and discovered that we
occupy a very tiny place in the heavens
Oh