Don't get me wrong.  No one loves radio (and podcasting) more than me.  But sometimes you have to see a picture to believe it.  That's the case with the XDF, a mind-bending and spectacular image released on September 25 by the Space Telescope Science Institute.

You've probably seen the UDF or Ultra Deep Field.  It has become one of the most popular astronomical images of all time.  I have it hanging behind my desk.  I know a member of the US House of Representatives who has it mounted on the wall of his office.  Basically, astronomers pointed the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) at one tiny patch of sky for a long time, revealing thousands of galaxies that stretch back through most of the history of our universe.

But the data for the UDF was gathered in 2003 and 2004.  The Hubble has been upgraded since then, primarily with the addition of the Wide Field Camera 3 during the 2009 servicing mission.  This gave the HST unprecedented infrared observing power.  That's particularly useful when you want to look into the distant past, as the inevitable "red shift" of light from early galaxies moves them out of the visible light range.