O
3

Hubble Deep Field image took me from skeptic to believer in 10 seconds

I used to think space photos were just pretty pictures for clickbait articles. Then I looked up the Hubble Deep Field image from 1995 on my break at the diner. Stared at it for like 5 minutes. That tiny speck of sky with thousands of galaxies, each with billions of stars. Made me feel real small, real fast. I printed it out and stuck it in my locker at work. Now I actually believe we're not the only planet with life. Has anyone else had that moment where an astronomy photo just hit different?
2 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In
2 Comments
samthompson
Respectfully, I gotta disagree with you calling them just "artists' impressions mixed with colorized data." The colors are real, they're just mapped to wavelengths our eyes can't see naturally. That's not making stuff up, that's translating what the telescope actually detected. And those thousands of galaxies in a tiny patch of sky? That's straight raw data from photons that traveled billions of years. I get being skeptical of flashy space pics online, but the Deep Field is different. Every single dot in that image is a real galaxy we confirmed with follow up observations. It's honestly wild that we can even capture that much light from so far away.
10
keithbennett
That shot is just artists' impressions mixed with colorized data.
8