Seriously, take a look at this picture
Image credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team.
Now, understand that it was taken by pointing the Hubble at this apparently empty area of space and just leaving the lens open for almost a month.
Illustration credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI); Image by: T. Rector, I. Dell’Antonio/NOAO/AURA/NSF, Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech, and UKSTU/AAO.
Look closely at that first picture. Those aren’t stars. Those are galaxies. Each one has a sagan of stars in it. And how cool is it that you can see that they’re galaxies, see the different shapes and colors of them. You and I will never get any closer to those, we can barely conceive of the distance they are from us, but we can see them.
We are truly small creatures, but we’re small creatures who can see the universe laid out in front of us and can imagine ways to step further out into it. What incredible tiny creatures we can be!
Go over to Starts With a Bang! for more explanations, pictures, and video of this incredible experiment.
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