Hubble's deep field image stats blew my mind

I was reading an old 1995 article about the Hubble Deep Field and found out it took 10 days of exposure time for a single image of what looked like empty space. That tiny patch of sky turned out to contain over 3,000 galaxies, each with billions of stars. Has anyone else gone down that rabbit hole of early deep field facts that just stick with you?

2 comments

2 Comments

smith.ray1mo agoMost Upvoted

Ten days of staring at one tiny spot and they came back with 3,000 galaxies just sitting there like it's nothing. And each one of those galaxies has billions of stars with their own planets and probably life doing its thing, all crammed into a patch of sky smaller than a grain of sand held at arm's length. Makes you wonder what we're actually accomplishing down here on our little rock.

burns.fiona1mo ago

And it's funny because that's exactly how I feel when I scroll through social media sometimes, seeing all these lives happening at once in a tiny little feed. It makes the argument I had last week about whose turn it was to take out the trash feel pretty small in the grand scheme of things. But I guess that's the trick, we just keep doing our small stuff while the universe does its huge thing.