One of the greatest images that have come from the Hubble Space telescope is the Hubble Deep Field (HDF) image. Astronomers selected one tiny region of the sky and imaged it for 10 consecutive days straight with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on Hubble. The purpose of the HDF was to find very distant very faint objects. The HDF image above is from the northern hemisphere and contains over 3000 sources, almost all of which are distant galaxies. The most distant galaxy in the image is ~12 billion light years away! This means we are seeing the galaxy as it appeared a mere 2.5 billion years after the Big Bang! (In astronomer terms that's very close to the beginning of the universe!)
You can also see the variety of different types of galaxies in this image. Some appear spiral shaped, which others appear more like fuzzy blobs, or point sources. HDF helped astronomers understand the properties of distant galaxies and how they are dispersed throughout the universe. A second HDF was taken in the southern hemisphere, and revealed a similar stunning image of the distant universe.
Image Credit: NASA/HST
