you thought the Hubble Deep Field galaxy photo was the most incredible thing you've ever seen, wait until you lay eyes on the most sensitive infrared map of the distant Universe ever taken. Over the last three years, UK astronomers have compiled data from the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii and their results are nothing less than astounding.

Today, Dr. Sebastien Foucaud from the University of Nottingham presented his first results to the April 4 National Astronomy Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society. These results only form part of the Ultra-Deep Survey (UDS) - an image containing over 100,000 galaxies over an area four times the size of the full Moon - and a look into the formation of the most distant galaxies
One of the goals of the project is to further scientific understanding about the time frame in which rare, massive galaxies formed in the distant Universe. It is a puzzle that has simply remained unsolved. Says Dr. Foucaud: "We see galaxies 10 times the mass of the Milky Way already in place at very early epochs. Now, for the first time, we are sampling a large enough volume of the distant Universe to be able to see them in sufficient numbers and really pin down when they were formed."

The UKIDSS Ultra-Deep Survey will, in time, give us a http://www.universetoday.com/2008/04/04/uk.../#comment-17413