Article Posted on : - Dec 09, 2009

The new image captured by Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA

WASHINGTON (BNS): In a stunning new image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the deepest ever view of our Universe has been captured which shows galaxies at their very early stage.

The galaxies were formed about 600 million years after Big Bang. The new image provides insights into how they grew in their formative years early in the Universe's history.

The magnificent, colourful image has been captured in the same region as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), which was taken in 2004 and is the deepest visible-light image of the universe, NASA said.

The photo was taken with the new WFC3/IR camera on Hubble in late August 2009 during four days of pointing for 173,000 seconds of total exposure time. The representation is "natural" so that blue objects look blue and red objects look red. The faintest objects are about one billionth as bright as can be seen with the naked eye.

This has paved the way for Hubble’s successor – the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) – which will look even farther into the Universe than Hubble, at infrared wavelengths. NASA plans to launch the JWST in 2014.