A while ago, folks who had time on Hubble pointed the telescope to a patch of black space for a couple of weeks or so, and it turned out that the picture was full of Galaxies, presumably only a few hundred thousand years old and possibly it reflected the early universe, with new galaxies seemingly everywhere. Is this part true?
This got me thinking… I don’t know much about photography, so my questions might seem very elementary. Forgive me.
But, as they looked at the developing picture each night, did astronomers begin to see the first glimpses of galaxies forming on the picture, while others remained invisible until later in the process? If it correct to assume that each one appeared when their light finally reached the HST? If the camera was permitted an entire year of being exposed to the same patch of darkness, how far back could we theoretically see?
And is that what actually happened? Light that finally appeared in the deep field had been traveling so long, that unless film had been exposed on that spot long enough to capture it, we would have missed it, and as a result never see the galaxies that were found?
Is the light created by the BB gone, never to be seen? Or if we were able to pick the right part of the sky to stare at, would it be possible to see seconds after the big bang? Or are those images gone forever?