NASA has just released an unprecedented image of the deepest of deep space showing the universe at its youngest.

The colorful and comprehensive composite images of deep space shows about 10,000 galaxies that date back to within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang, the cataclysmic event that created the universe and everything that we know of some 14 billion years ago.

Like Us on Facebook

The image shows thousands of galaxies in all ages, sizes and shapes. Some of the oldest galaxies visible on the image appear as light from 12 billion years ago, which is almost as old as the universe itself.

NASA said, however, that the most exciting part of the image is the use of ultraviolet light that reveals the "missing link" of galaxies five billion to 10 billion years old. This is the time span when most stars in the universe came into existence.

The Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field study that put the image together has filled in this missing link.

The astounding image was created from 11 year's worth of shots taken by NASA's orbiting Hubble Telescope. The image is the deepest panchromatic image of the sky ever made. One can compare the photo's clarity to seeing one firefly on the moon, said NASA.

Scientists used ultraviolet light to show the full range of colors captured by Hubble. The image provides information from what NASA describes as the "middle ground," or stars made between five billion and 10 billion years ago.

The image was taken in 841 orbits of the Hubble. Many of the 10,000 galaxies in the image are distorted, apparently the victims of collisions with other galaxies. The mutual gravity of these colliding galaxies distorted them into weird shapes quadrillions of kilometers across.

Scientists, however, await an even more astounding series of images. The infrared-friendly James Webb telescope is expected to send back even greater deep-space shots after its launch in 2018. The James Webb telescope will eventually replace Hubble.

TagsNASA, Universe photos, Universe