EOS captures amazing image of Chandra Deep Field South

The European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) has released an amazing new image of Chandra Deep Field South.

Chandra Deep Field South is approximately one degree across, and as shown in the image above, would appear an unremarkable part of the sky.

However, the first images of the region by the Hubble Telescope in 2005 reveals that even in the dark recess of the sky, possibly millions of galaxies exist.

The new shot from ESO comes with the following explanation:

Anyone who has wondered what it might be like to dive into a pool of millions of distant galaxies of different shapes and colours, will enjoy the latest image released by ESO. Obtained in part with the Very Large Telescope, the image is the deepest ground-based U-band image of the Universe ever obtained. It contains more than 27 million pixels and is the result of 55 hours of observations with the VIMOS instrument.

This uniquely beautiful patchwork image, with its myriad of brightly coloured galaxies, shows the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S), arguably the most observed and best studied region in the entire sky. The CDF-S is one of the two regions selected as part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS), an effort of the worldwide astronomical community that unites the deepest observations from ground- and space-based facilities at all wavelengths from X-ray to radio. Its primary purpose is to provide astronomers with the most sensitive census of the distant Universe to assist in their study of the formation and evolution of galaxies.

The full 27 million pixels shot can be viewed here, but we warn that it’s 78.6 mb to view. A more managable 31.2mb JPG is available here. A smaller cropped version below. If you’ve ever wondered how small we are in the universe, this is a great place to start.