Hubble Space Telescope shows 5,000 ancient galaxies sparkling like confetti

Thousands of distant, primordial galaxies in different shapes and sizes glow in infrared light in a newly released image from the Hubble Space Telescope.

An image taken as part of the UVCANDELS program by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a region billions of light-years away from Earth that contains about 5,000 galaxies.

Image credit: NASA

The image is part of a recent survey called UVCANDELS. UVCANDELS provides unique "insight into ongoing star formation in galaxies both near and far," said Xin Wang, an astronomer at Caltech

Over about 10 days of observational time, Hubble imaged about 140,000 galaxies. Some of them are visible in the newly released image — numerous types of galaxies, seen from a range of angles.

UVCANDELS is the sequel to another survey, CANDELS, which examined infrared and redder visible light.

Hubble retraced, with ultraviolet and purpler visible light, the parts of the sky that CANDELS examined, including the one in the newly released image, known as the Extended Groth Strip.

By combining layers from both studies, scientists created this new image.

These surveys allow scientists to look back at an era of the early universe known as reionization

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