Hubble and the Edge of the UniverseOn December 30, 1995 the Hubble Space Telescope completed the ser

Hubble and the Edge of the UniverseOn December 30, 1995 the Hubble Space Telescope completed the series of 342 images that were rendered in to the Hubble Deep Field View, (pictured above top right) perhaps the most astonishing and humbling scientific achievement made by humans in the field of space science. The area for the Deep Field View was chosen as one of the ‘darkest’ spots in the sky:  imagine holding a grain of sand at arms length or a viewing a tennis ball at 100 meters, and looking in the direction of the darkest, least populated portions of the night sky.  The total area is equivalent to  one twenty four millionth of the total night sky.  There were many skeptics when the Deep Field View was first proposed-many assumed that the this portion of ‘dark sky’ would show that in fact there are portions of ‘dark sky’ from our vantage point.  Most of the three thousand or so images in the Deep Field View are in fact entire galaxies and form some of the oldest and farthest structures ever seen, with only 20 or so nearer stars.  Few images hint at the immensity or complexity of our universe as much as this image.In addition to its day to day duties, Hubble has returned to its deep field views several times, with the Deep Field View South (pictured above top right) a couple years later, the 2004 Hubble Ultra Deep Field, and later refined as the Hubble Extreme Deep Field of 2012.  Named for American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble  (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953), the Hubble Space Telescope continues to work in Edwin Hubble’s field of deep cosmological inquiry and extra-galactic astronomy.  Despite early problems including a dramatic in-space repair mission, the Hubble has been sending back pictures and data of every corner of the universe, making it one of the most important scientific tools every created.  The Hubble Deep Field, the Hubble Space Telescope as seen from Atlantis Space Shuttle, and the rendering of the Hubble making the DFV, all courtesy NASA/Hubble. -- source link

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