Hubble legacy field - 16 years' worth of observations in one mosaic image. Taken of one small area of the night sky roughly the size of the full moon yet showing approximately 265,000 galaxies which, each contain billions / sometimes trillions of stars. Puts life and Mars mission ambitions in perspective… The wavelength range stretches from ultraviolet to near-infrared light, capturing all the features of galaxy assembly over time. They stretch back through 13.3 billion years of time to just 500 million years after the universe's birth in the big bang. The faintest and farthest galaxies in this image are just one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see. This is likely to be our most complete single image of the universe for some time and is also a fitting legacy for NASA who championed the benefits of space-based observations (supported by some Speedy wearing EVA astronauts at times) The image is worth downloading and zooming in / see what you can discover….. http://hubblesite.org/image/4492/news Download link (various image size options available) pasted above.
This has been one of my personal defining moments in life to see this image (actually the original way back when). It has that kind of effect of "whoooooa!". The deeper you look, the more there is. I have an original Ortelius map of the world from 1570. Can you imagine life back then and then looking at something like a map of the world and thinking "how is this possible?" It has a quote on the bottom from Cicero from 60BC that states(translated from Latin): 'Who can consider human affairs to be great, when he comprehends the eternity and vastness of the entire world?' Today we can see infinitely further than our own world and into the vastness of space. There was infinity before you and there will be infinity after you. Live life and love while you can.