Astronomy? Impossible to understand and madness to investigate.
— Sophocles
Introduction: Welcome to the Hubble Deep Field.
The Hubble Space Telescope, named after noted astronomer Edwin Hubble, was launched into orbit in 1990. Telescopes mounted to the surface of the Earth have a difficult time taking pictures of objects in space, mostly due to interference from Earth's atmosphere. While the Hubble Space Telescope is not the first telescope we've launched into space, it is one of the most powerful. You can read more about the telescope and what it is doing now by visiting hubblesite.org.
In December of 1995, five years after the Hubble Space Telescope was sent into orbit, scientists focused its lens on an empty portion of the sky no bigger than a grain of sand held at arms length, and snapped many photos. The picture on the right shows the tiny section of sky that the Hubble Space Telescope focused on during this experiment. We wanted to know what was in the dark spaces between the stars we can see from Earth.
Many people expected the images that returned to be empty, dark. In fact, some people considered this experiment to be an irresponsible waste of time and resources, claiming that the Hubble Space Telescope was too valuable to point at nothing, even for just a few days. But, we did point the telescope at nothing, and we snapped photos of what we thought was nothing, and waited.
In December of 1995, five years after the Hubble Space Telescope was sent into orbit, scientists focused its lens on an empty portion of the sky no bigger than a grain of sand held at arms length, and snapped many photos. The picture on the right shows the tiny section of sky that the Hubble Space Telescope focused on during this experiment. We wanted to know what was in the dark spaces between the stars we can see from Earth.
Many people expected the images that returned to be empty, dark. In fact, some people considered this experiment to be an irresponsible waste of time and resources, claiming that the Hubble Space Telescope was too valuable to point at nothing, even for just a few days. But, we did point the telescope at nothing, and we snapped photos of what we thought was nothing, and waited.
On the right, you can see a portion of the picture that Hubble took, dubbed the Hubble Deep Field. Inside that tiny portion of sky seen above, we discovered an almost unbelievable amount of stuff.
Most of the points of light in this picture are too far away to be stars. In other words, when we snapped a photo of what looked like dark empty space, we got a picture back that is filled with thousands of galaxies! The Universe turned out to be bigger and fuller than we ever imagined.
Many of the objects visible in this picture are billions of light-years from Earth. But what does that number really mean? And what does it say about our Universe that a tiny little spec of empty space can contain so many galaxies? The goal of this website is to answer these questions, and more!
What follows is a brief but comprehensive discussion of Astronomy, the study of the Universe, how it works now, and how it evolved from a point smaller than an atom. The Briefest History of the Universe is a beginners guide to understanding the Cosmos.
Most of the points of light in this picture are too far away to be stars. In other words, when we snapped a photo of what looked like dark empty space, we got a picture back that is filled with thousands of galaxies! The Universe turned out to be bigger and fuller than we ever imagined.
Many of the objects visible in this picture are billions of light-years from Earth. But what does that number really mean? And what does it say about our Universe that a tiny little spec of empty space can contain so many galaxies? The goal of this website is to answer these questions, and more!
What follows is a brief but comprehensive discussion of Astronomy, the study of the Universe, how it works now, and how it evolved from a point smaller than an atom. The Briefest History of the Universe is a beginners guide to understanding the Cosmos.