Combined Deep View of Infrared and Visible Light Galaxies

This narrow, deep view of the universe reveals a plethora of galaxies (reaching fainter than 28th magnitude), as seen in visible and infrared light by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The reddish galaxies are glowing in infrared light, and the bluish galaxies are glowing in visible light.

Several distinctive types of galaxies can be seen in these views: blue dwarf galaxies, disk galaxies, and very red elliptical galaxies. A bright, nearby face-on spiral galaxy appears at upper right. Some of the brightest objects in the field are foreground stars in the halo of our own Milky Way galaxy. By combining views in infrared light and visible light astronomers have a better idea of the shapes of galaxies in the remote universe, and of the fraction which are old or dust-obscured at early epochs.