Researchers captured stunning photos of deep space to put together a "comprehensive picture" of the universe's evolution.
The new image could be the "missing link" in understanding of star formation, a Space Telescope Science Institute (STScl) news release reported.
The findings were made using ASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in operation for 25 years. The image itself is composite of several photos that were taken from 2003 to 2012.
Researchers had already looked at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) in both visible and near-infrared light. This new image used ultraviolet light, allowing for a full range of colors.
The remarkable image captures 10,000 galaxies and goes back hundreds of millions of years.
"The lack of information from ultraviolet light made studying galaxies in the HUDF like trying to understand the history of families without knowing about the grade-school children," principal investigator Harry Teplitz of Caltech in Pasadena, California, said in the news release. "The addition of the ultraviolet fills in this missing range."
Ultraviolet light comes from the hottest and youngest stars. Researchers can observe these wavelengths to determine which galaxies are in the process of forming stars and where exactly the stars are forming within the galaxy.
Studying these ultraviolet images in the intermediate time period allowed researchers to better-understand how galaxies grew by forming "collections" of ultra-hot stars. A space-based telescope was the only way to finally accomplish this feat.
"Ultraviolet surveys like this one using the unique capability of Hubble are incredibly important in planning for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope," team member Rogier Windhorst of Arizona State University in Tempe, said in the news release. "Hubble provides an invaluable ultraviolet-light dataset that researchers will need to combine with infrared data from Webb. This is the first really deep ultraviolet image to show the power of that combination."
