# Trying to find a picture showing thousands of galaxies from a blank space. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 9, 2009, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-find-a-picture-showing-thousands-of-galaxies-from-a-blank-space/513187 "2009-10-09T14:16:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr\_Happy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cab0a1/32.png) [@Mr\_Happy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Happy)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-find-a-picture-showing-thousands-of-galaxies-from-a-blank-space/513187/1 "2009-10-09T14:16:59Z")
My thread title may be a little hard to understand, so i will explain. A few months ago i saw a website which was dealing with the enormity of space. It showed a simple picture of space and in it you could see thousands of stars. But then the webpage went on to say “Lets now focus on a tiny, supposedly blank area of this picture and look further”. It then highlighted an area of about 1 square centimetre and showed all the galaxies that were contained within that small area of the original picture. I’ve tried and tried to find this picture/website but to no avail. Does anyone have any idea what I’m talking about? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-find-a-picture-showing-thousands-of-galaxies-from-a-blank-space/513187/2 "2009-10-09T14:29:56Z")
It was probably the [Hubble Ultra Deep Field](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field). [Interesting video about it](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcBV-cXVWFw) (if you ignore the cheesy first minute or so). ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-find-a-picture-showing-thousands-of-galaxies-from-a-blank-space/513187/3 "2009-10-09T14:30:12Z")
Sounds like a website wrapped around the [Hubble Deep Field](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Hubble+Deep+Field%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a), or the [Hubble Ultra Deep Field](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Hubble+Ultra+Deep+Field%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a). There’s a gazillion such sites. ---
**Author:** ![pan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e495f1/32.png) [@pan1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pan1)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-find-a-picture-showing-thousands-of-galaxies-from-a-blank-space/513187/4 "2009-10-09T14:30:58Z")
[http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000709.html](http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000709.html) is the picture you’re talking about - if I remember correctly. I can’t find the link to how this looks empty to the naked eye, but I remember this as that picture…I might be wrong. Memory is never 100% ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-find-a-picture-showing-thousands-of-galaxies-from-a-blank-space/513187/5 "2009-10-09T14:32:12Z")
> [@pan1](#): > > [http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000709.html](http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000709.html) > > is the picture you’re talking about - if I remember correctly. I can’t find the link to how this looks empty to the naked eye, but I remember this as that picture…I might be wrong. Memory is never 100% Wasn’t the point that it even looked empty to telescopes before Hubble? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-find-a-picture-showing-thousands-of-galaxies-from-a-blank-space/513187/6 "2009-10-09T14:40:02Z")
> [@Scheidt-Hoch](#): > > Wasn’t the point that it even looked empty to telescopes before Hubble? Yes. [Another video about it](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVjF_7ensg) - very good until the 3D rendering, which doesn’t mean shit really as it would require eyes several parsecs apart. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-find-a-picture-showing-thousands-of-galaxies-from-a-blank-space/513187/7 "2009-10-09T15:28:48Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > [Another video about it](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVjF_7ensg) - very good until the 3D rendering, which doesn’t mean shit really as it would require eyes several parsecs apart. There’s no stereoscopic vision required for the effect they use — the 3D effect is created solely by the motion of the “camera”. If you want to complain about something, I suppose you could complain about how the camera is moving many skillions of times faster than light, or how the further galaxies don’t look like that any more because of the light travel time. But you could equally well justify these as “artistic license” — it’s not really meant to be scientifically accurate so much as awe-inspiring, and that’s as may be. ---
**Author:** ![conway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ec9cab/32.png) [@conway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/conway)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-find-a-picture-showing-thousands-of-galaxies-from-a-blank-space/513187/8 "2009-10-09T15:39:17Z")
Was it this one? [http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/6254/353424.jpg](http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/6254/353424.jpg) ([From this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=514477&highlight=hubble)) ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-find-a-picture-showing-thousands-of-galaxies-from-a-blank-space/513187/9 "2009-10-09T23:46:52Z")
We must put a stop to the enormity of space. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![thirdname](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@thirdname](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdname)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2009, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-find-a-picture-showing-thousands-of-galaxies-from-a-blank-space/513187/10 "2009-10-10T12:01:00Z")
Is that a ultra-deep field a false color image? It looks awfully colorful. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2009, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-find-a-picture-showing-thousands-of-galaxies-from-a-blank-space/513187/11 "2009-10-11T20:22:41Z")
Pretty much every astronomical picture you ever see is false color, but when it’s a visible light image, the false colors are usually chosen in such a way as to approximate the true color. The way you get color in an astronomical image at all is to pass the light through various filters before the detector, produce an image for each filter, and then combine them. But the filters are chosen based on what’s scientifically interesting (usually particular spectral lines of various elements), which does not correspond to the response of the color receptors in our eyes.