Get ready for cosmic adventure: Video unfolds billions of years of cosmic history

 

Video Credits: NASA, ESA, F. Summers, J. DePasquale, G. Bacon, and Z. Levay (STScI); Acknowledgement: H. Ferguson, A. Koekemoer, and the CANDELS Team; Music: "Rotisserie Graveyard" by Doctor Turtle CC BY 4.0

More than 26,000 galaxies detailed by the Hubble Space Telescope appear in this CANDELS Ultra Deep Survey (UDS) field. As the fly-through progresses, the changes observed in the galaxies depict the changes that have occurred in their structure and physical appearance over billions of years of cosmic history.

Short for the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey, CANDELS is one of the largest projects ever done with the Hubble telescope. It surveyed five fields to study the early universe by observing distant galaxies and their evolution over time.

Within the sequence, there is a dense cluster of galaxies roughly 6 billion light-years away, with the range of the sequence extending beyond twice that distance. Due to the vast distance that the light from these galaxies has traversed across the universe, the images captured in the sequence depict the galaxies as they existed billions of years in the past. 

Let’s “fly” through space! More than 26,000 galaxies detailed by Hubble appear in this field. Look around to spot different galaxy structures. This video unfolds billions of years of cosmic history: https://t.co/EY1T3DwAOg pic.twitter.com/1iLBSXDTaZ

— Hubble Space Telescope (@HubbleTelescope) March 24, 2023

The Hubble Space Telescope, a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), has revolutionized astronomy by capturing breathtaking images of the universe and making many groundbreaking discoveries including determining the rate of expansion of the universe, which led to the discovery of dark energy and mapping the distribution of dark matter in the universe.

Over its more than 32+ years lifetime, Hubble has been serviced and upgraded several times to keep it functioning at peak performance.