Galaxies number in the thousands in this Hubble image. Representing a narrow "keyhole" view stretching to the visible horizon of the universe, the Hubble Deep Field image covers a speck of the sky only about the width of a dime 75 feet away.

Though the field is a very small sample of the heavens, it is considered representative of the typical distribution of galaxies in space, because the universe, statistically, looks largely the same in all directions. Gazing into this small field, Hubble uncovered an assortment of at least 1,500 galaxies at various stages of evolution.

Photo credit: NASA/R. Williams (Space Telescope Science Institute), the Hubble Deep Field Team