"This is the number of galaxies in nothing."

"This is what [goes unseen] when we stare
at a blank spot in the sky where nothing appears to be."

One person's statement about the importance of the Hubble Deep Field and Ultra-Deep Field images, 10- and 11-day exposures that revealed thousands of galaxies in the far reaches of the universe.


Hubble Deep Field, 1995


Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, 2003

There was a Deep Field South image released in '98, also.

As I searched for full-sized images of the photos above, I found a Norwegian astro site that featured some of the secondary images from the Ultra-Deep Field release. One of them was an image that I'd used on the now-defunct nmazca.blog in 2004. I had been looking for more information about "Peering through the cosmic sphere" by Camille Flammarion at the time, and the UDF graphic came up during my search.

I was struck by how this depiction of the universe resembled a cut-away image of a baby inside the womb. "Cosmic placenta!" was what I excitedly banged away on the keyboard that day...