This narrow, deep view of the universe reveals a plethora of galaxies (reaching fainter than 28th magnitude), as seen in visible and infrared light by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The reddish galaxies are glowing in infrared light, and the bluish galaxies are glowing in visible light. Several distinctive types of galaxies can be seen in these views: blue dwarf galaxies, disk galaxies, and very red elliptical galaxies. A bright, nearby face-on spiral galaxy appears at upper right. Some of the brightest objects in the field are foreground stars in the halo of our own Milky Way galaxy. By combining views in infrared light and visible light astronomers have a better idea of the shapes of galaxies in the remote universe, and of the fraction which are old or dust-obscured at early epochs. Galaxies could appear bright in the infrared (and thus red in this picture) for several reasons. They might be dusty, or contain old stars, or are at a very great distance. Several of the red galaxies in this field have the colors and the smooth, symmetric shapes expected for old elliptical galaxies. The existence of such objects in the early universe and their numbers can set important limits on the era when the earliest galaxies assembled and formed most of their stars. In general, the image shows that the shapes and sizes of most faint galaxies are similar in infrared and visible light, suggesting that younger and older stars within distant galaxies are well mixed and that dust is not completely distorting impressions of distant objects. The image was taken in October 1998 as part of the Hubble Deep Field South imaging campaign. It is in a small patch of sky in the constellation Tucana. The false-color image is a composite of separate images taken with the NICMOS and STIS cameras on board the Hubble Space Telescope. The red and green colors correspond to infrared wavelengths of 1.6 and 1.1 microns, respectively. The blue color corresponds to the STIS view that covers the full range of visible wavelengths.
Credits
Credit: R. Williams (STScI) and the HDF-South team, and NASA| About The Object | |
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| Object Name | HDF-S |
| R.A. Position | 22h 32m 55.0s |
| Dec. Position | -60° 33' 10.0" |
| About The Object | |
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| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
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| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
