GOODS South

This Hubble Space Telescope view reveals thousands of galaxies stretching back into time across billions of light-years of space. The image covers a portion of a large galaxy census called the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS).

Besides the myriad of galaxies visible in this image, only 10 percent of the total number of galaxies in the universe are observable for the current generation of telescopes, according to a new analysis of the GOODS and other Hubble deep-field surveys. The study's researchers concluded that at least 10 times more galaxies exist in the observable universe than previously thought.

According to the research, about 90 percent of galaxies in the observable universe are too faint and too far away to be seen with present-day telescopes.

About the colours

This image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by the ACS/WFC instrument. Four filters were used to sample different wavelength bands. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. Blue: F435W (B) Green: F606 (V) Red: F775W (i) + F850LP (z)

About the data

These GOODS datasets are from the Hubble proposals: 9425 and 9583 - P.I.: M. Giavalisco (University of Massachusetts, Amherst); 9727 - P.I.: S. Perlmutter (University of California, Berkeley); and 9728 , 10339 , and 10340 - P.I.: A. Riess (STScI).