THE HUBBLE DEEP FIELD

The image below is a photo of the exhibit panel. A text transcript follows.

Photo of the panel from the exhibit.
Approximate dimensions: H:44 in W:24 in

Sky & Telescope poster 1997
Images by Akira Fujii; Becky Walldroff, Yasser Rathore, and P. Frank Winkler (Middlebury College); Robert Williams, the Hubble Deep Field team, the Space Telescope Science Insititue, and NASA; processed byTony Hallas

How and when did galaxies come into being? Are large star systems like our Milky Way born in isolation, or do they grow by swallowing small neighbors? To answer these questions, astronomers looked for a place in the universe where they could take a census of galaxies at all stages of formation and evolution. As it happens, such a place exists in a rather unremarkable patch of sky near the Big Dipper. The bottom image shows that region as we might see it from our own backyards. Zoom in on the field marked by the little box and a dozen or so galaxies come into view, as seen in the center image. Take yet another step and the picture changes dramatically. Astronomer Robert E. Williams used the Hubble Space Telescope to stare for more than 100 hours into the region marked by the small chevron-shaped box. The result is the Hubble Deep Field (top). This window on infinity reveals more than 1,500 faint galaxies spanning an area of the sky that can be covered by a grain of sand held at arm's length. Plainly visible in the Hubble Deep Field are huge stellar cities billions of light-years away. Some of these distant spiral and elliptical galaxies look very much like those seen nearby. We also see a bewildering variety of irregular and interacting systems even farther away that may be the building blocks of today's normal-looking galaxies.