A Flight through the Hubble Ultra Deep Field
Video Credit:
NASA,
ESA,
F. Summers, Z. Levay, L. Frattare, B. Mobasher, A. Koekemoer and the HUDF Team
(STScI)
What would it look like to fly through the distant universe?
To find out, a team of astronomers estimated the relative distances
to over 5,000 galaxies in one of the most distant fields of galaxies ever imaged: the
Hubble Ultra Deep Field
(HUDF).
Because it takes light a long time to cross the universe, most galaxies visible in the
featured video
are seen when the universe was only a fraction of its current age, were
still forming, and have unusual shapes when compared to modern galaxies.
No mature looking spiral galaxies such as our
Milky Way or the
Andromeda galaxy yet exist.
Toward the end of the video the
virtual observer flies past the
farthest galaxies
in the HUDF field, recorded to have a
redshift past 8.
This early class of low luminosity
galaxies likely contained
energetic stars emitting light that
transformed much of the
remaining normal matter
in the universe from a cold gas to a hot ionized
plasma.