Spitzer and Hubble team up to find "Big Baby" galaxy in the newborn Universe: This image demonstrates how data from two space observatories, the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes, are used to identify one of the most distant galaxies ever seen. This galaxy is unusually massive for its youthful age of 800 million years. (After the Big Bang, the Milky Way by comparison, is approximately 13 billion years old.) [Left] - The galaxy, named HUDF-JD2, was pinpointed among approximately 10,000 others in a small area of sky called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF). This is the deepest images of the universe ever made at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. [Upper Right] - A blow-up of one small area of the HUDF is used to identify where the distant galaxy is located (inside green circle). This indicates that the galaxy's visible light has been absorbed by traveling billions of light-years through intervening hydrogen. [Center Right] - The galaxy was detected using Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). But at near-infrared wavelengths it is very faint and red. [Bottom Right] - The Spitzer Infrared Array Camera (IRAC), easily detects the galaxy at longer infrared wavelengths. Spitzer's IRAC is sensitive to the light from older, redder stars, which should make up most of the mass in a galaxy. The brightness of the infrared galaxy suggests that it is quite massive.

Name: Hubble Ultra Deep Field, HUDF, HUDF-JD2
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Size : GiantEarly Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: Galaxies
Distance: z=4.25 (redshift)
Release date: 27 September 2005, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, B. Mobasher ( Space Telescope Science Institute and the European Space Agency)

Spitzer and Hubble team up to find "Big Baby" galaxy in the newborn Universe [ACS image]: This image demonstrates how data from two space observatories, the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes, are used to identify one of the most distant galaxies ever seen. This galaxy is unusually massive for its youthful age of 800 million years. (After the Big Bang, the Milky Way by comparison, is approximately 13 billion years old.) The galaxy, named HUDF-JD2, was pinpointed among approximately 10,000 others in a small area of sky called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF). This is the deepest images of the universe ever made at optical and near-infrared wavelengths.

Name: Hubble Ultra Deep Field, HUDF, HUDF-JD2
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Size : GiantEarly Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Fornax
Distance: z=4.25 (redshift)
Release date: 27 September 2005, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, B. Mobasher ( Space Telescope Science Institute and the European Space Agency)

Spitzer and Hubble team up to find "Big Baby" galaxy in the newborn Universe [ACS blow-up]: This image demonstrates how data from two space observatories, the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes, are used to identify one of the most distant galaxies ever seen. This galaxy is unusually massive for its youthful age of 800 million years. (After the Big Bang, the Milky Way by comparison, is approximately 13 billion years old.) A blow-up of one small area of the HUDF is used to identify where the distant galaxy is located. This indicates that the galaxy's visible light has been absorbed by traveling billions of light-years through intervening hydrogen.

Name: Hubble Ultra Deep Field, HUDF, HUDF-JD2
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Size : GiantEarly Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Fornax
Distance: z=4.25 (redshift)
Release date: 27 September 2005, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, B. Mobasher ( Space Telescope Science Institute and the European Space Agency)

Spitzer and Hubble team up to find "Big Baby" galaxy in the newborn Universe [Spitzer/IRAC view]: This image demonstrates how data from two space observatories, the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes, are used to identify one of the most distant galaxies ever seen. This galaxy is unusually massive for its youthful age of 800 million years. (After the Big Bang, the Milky Way by comparison, is approximately 13 billion years old.) The Spitzer Infrared Array Camera (IRAC), easily detects the galaxy at longer infrared wavelengths. Spitzer's IRAC is sensitive to the light from older, redder stars, which should make up most of the mass in a galaxy. The brightness of the infrared galaxy suggests that it is quite massive.

Name: Hubble Ultra Deep Field, HUDF, HUDF-JD2
Type: Early Universe : Galaxy : Size : GiantEarly Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster
Category: Star Clusters
Constellation: Fornax
Distance: z=4.25 (redshift)
Release date: 27 September 2005, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, B. Mobasher ( Space Telescope Science Institute and the European Space Agency)

Young stars sculpt gas with powerful outflows: This Hubble Space Telescope view shows one of the most dynamic and intricately detailed star-forming regions in space, located 210,000 light-years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. At the centre of the region is a brilliant star cluster called NGC 346. A dramatic structure of arched, ragged filaments with a distinct ridge surrounds the cluster. A torrent of radiation from the hot stars in the cluster NGC 346, at the centre of this Hubble image, eats into denser areas around it, creating a fantasy sculpture of dust and gas. The dark, intricately beaded edge of the ridge, seen in silhouette, is particularly dramatic. It contains several small dust globules that point back towards the central cluster, like windsocks caught in a gale.

Name: N66, NGC 346
Type: Local Universe : Star : Grouping : ClusterLocal Universe : Nebula : Type : Star Formation
Category: NebulaeStar Clusters
Constellation: Tucana
Distance: 170000 light years
Release date: 10 November 2005, 19:00
Credit: NASA, ESA and A. Nota (ESA/STScI, STScI/AURA)