More than 12 billion years of history captured by the Hubble Telescope’s camera

Credit: NASA, ESA, R. Windhorst, S. Cohen, and M. Mechtley (Arizona State University, Tempe), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia), P. McCarthy (Carnegie Observatories), N. Hathi (University of California, Riverside), R. Ryan (University of California, Davis), and H. Yan (Ohio State University). Photo No. STScI-PRC10-01.

A panoramic, full-colour view of thousands of galaxies in various stages of assembly has been taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The image, which was made from mosaics taken in September and October 2009, were taken by the newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) that ePHOTOzine reported on and in 2004 by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).

The image combines a broad range of colours, from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared to create a detailed, multi-colour view of the universe that has never before been assembled at such a level of clarity, accuracy, and depth.

There’s 7,500 galaxies present in the image which stretch back through most of the universe’s history with the farthest galaxies appearing as they’d have looked more than 13 billion years ago, or roughly 650 million years after the Big Bang.

The WFC3 is the first imaging platform on Hubble to be able to see images across the ultraviolet and infra-red as well as visible wavebands.