List of deep fields

Hubble Legacy Field ^[1]

Comparison of how far in the past some of the Hubble Space Telescope's deep fields have seen in terms of redshift and million years and also how far the James Webb Space Telescope should be able to see.

In astronomy, a deep field is an image of a portion of the sky taken with a very long exposure time, in order to detect and study faint objects. The depth of the field refers to the apparent magnitude or the flux of the faintest objects that can be detected in the image. ^[2] Deep field observations usually cover a small angular area on the sky, because of the large amounts of telescope time required to reach faint flux limits. Deep fields are used primarily to study galaxy evolution and the cosmic evolution of active galactic nuclei, and to detect faint objects at high redshift. Numerous ground-based and space-based observatories have taken deep-field observations at wavelengths spanning radio to X-rays.

The first deep-field image to receive a great deal of public attention was the Hubble Deep Field, observed in 1995 with the WFPC2 camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. Other space telescopes that have obtained deep-field observations include the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the XMM-Newton Observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope.

Left: image taken by Hubble (2017) vs Right: the image taken by Webb (2022) ^[3]

Deep Field – Galaxy cluster SMACS J0723.3-7327 ^{[4] [5] [2] [6] [7] [8]}

Table

The following table gives a partial list of deep-field observations taken since 1995.

Image	Name	Telescope	Year captured	Size (arcminute)	Number of exposures
	Hubble Deep Field	Hubble Space Telescope	1995	2.6′x2.6′	342
	Hubble Deep Field South	Hubble Space Telescope	1998	5.3²′	995
	Chandra Deep Field South	Chandra X-ray Observatory	1999–2000	16′ across	11
	Hubble Ultra-Deep Field	Hubble Space Telescope	2003–2004	2.4′x2.4′	808
	Extended Groth Strip	Hubble Space Telescope	2004–2005	70′x10′	over 500
	Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS)	Hubble Space Telescope	2011
	ESO's VLT and the SINFONI instrument [9]	Very Large Telescope	2012
	Hubble eXtreme Deep Field	Hubble Space Telescope	2012	2.3′x3′
	Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (UV/VIS/NIR)	Hubble Space Telescope	2014
	Hubble Frontier Fields MACS J0416.1-2403 [10]	Hubble Space Telescope	2015
	Hubble Frontier Fields Abell 2744 [11]	Hubble Space Telescope	2015
	Hubble Frontier Fields MACS J0717.5+3745	Hubble Space Telescope	2015
	Hubble Frontier Fields MACS J1149.5+2223 [12]	Hubble Space Telescope	2015
	Hubble Frontier Fields Abell S1063 [13]	Hubble Space Telescope	2016
	Hubble Frontier Fields Abell 370 [14]	Hubble Space Telescope	2017
	Hubble Frontier Fields Abell 370 parallel field [15]	Hubble Space Telescope	2017
	Hubble Deep UV (HDUV) Legacy Survey [16]	Hubble Space Telescope	2018
	Hubble Legacy Field [1]	Hubble Space Telescope	2019	25′x25′	7,500
	Dark Energy Survey [17] [18]	Víctor M. Blanco Telescope	2021	18.41′x9.64′
	Webb's First Deep Field	James Webb Space Telescope	2022	2.4′ across
	James Webb Space Telescope – JADES (James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey) First Deep Field [19] [20]	James Webb Space Telescope	2022	4-6′×12′ approx; (4′×6′ and 6′×6′ subsets adjacent) [21]
	James Webb Space Telescope – JADES (James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey) [22]	James Webb Space Telescope	2024	??′ across
	Euclid Deep Field North (EDF-N) [23]	Euclid	2025-(data release 3)	20 deg2	DR3 visits: 40
	Euclid Deep Field South (EDF-S) [23]	Euclid	2025-(data release 3)	23 deg2	DR3 visits: 45
	Euclid Deep Field Fornax (EDF-F), centred on Chandra Deep Field South [23]	Euclid	2025-(data release 3)	10 deg2	DR3 visits: 52

See also

• List of Hubble Space Telescope anniversary images

References

1. "Hubble Assembles Wide View of the Distant Universe". www.spacetelescope.org. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
2. Pacucci, Fabio (15 July 2022). "How Taking Pictures of 'Nothing' Changed Astronomy - Deep-field images of "empty" regions of the sky from Webb and other space telescopes are revealing more of the universe than we ever thought possible". Scientific American . Retrieved 16 July 2022.
3. Chow, Denise; Wu, Jiachuan (12 July 2022). "Photos: How pictures from the Webb telescope compare to Hubble's - NASA's $10 billion telescope peers deeper into space than ever, revealing previously undetectable details in the cosmos". NBC News . Retrieved 16 July 2022.
4. Garner, Rob (11 July 2022). "NASA's Webb Delivers Deepest Infrared Image of Universe Yet". NASA . Archived from the original on 12 July 2022. Retrieved 12 July 2022.
5. Overbye, Dennis; Chang, Kenneth; Tankersley, Jim (11 July 2022). "Biden and NASA Share First Webb Space Telescope Image – From the White House on Monday, humanity got its first glimpse of what the observatory in space has been seeing: a cluster of early galaxies". The New York Times . Archived from the original on 12 July 2022. Retrieved 12 July 2022.
6. Deliso, Meredith; Longo, Meredith; Rothenberg, Nicolas (14 July 2022). "Hubble vs. James Webb telescope images: See the difference". ABC News . Retrieved 15 July 2022.
7. Kooser, Amanda (13 July 2012). "Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope Images Compared: See the Difference - The James Webb Space Telescope builds on Hubble's legacy with stunning new views of the cosmos". CNET . Retrieved 16 July 2022.
8. Atkinson, Nancy (2 May 2022). "Now, We can Finally Compare Webb to Other Infrared Observatories". Universe Today . Archived from the original on 10 May 2022. Retrieved 12 May 2022.
9. "The Feeding Habits of Teenage Galaxies". ESO Press Release. Retrieved 16 March 2012.
10. Vogel, Tracy (21 January 2015). "MACS J0416 Data is Complete". Frontier Fields. Retrieved 24 Nov 2015.
11. "Meet the Frontier Fields: Abell 2744". Frontier Fields. 4 February 2014. Retrieved 24 Nov 2015.
12. "A galactic gathering" . Retrieved 23 May 2016.
13. "Space... the final frontier". www.spacetelescope.org. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
14. "Abell 370". spacetelescope.org. Retrieved 21 Jun 2018.
15. "Abell 370 parallel field". spacetelescope.org. Retrieved 21 Jun 2018.
16. Jenkins, Ann; Villard, Ray; Oesch, Pascal; Montes, Mireia; Hille, Karl (16 August 2018). "NASA - Hubble Paints Picture of the Evolving Universe". NASA . Retrieved 17 August 2018.
17. [e-mail]. "Dark Energy Survey Releases Most Precise Look at the Universe's Evolution - First three years of survey data uses observations of 226 million galaxies over ⅛ of the sky". www.noirlab.edu.
18. [e-mail]. "Dark Energy Survey deep field image". www.noirlab.edu.
19. Gough, Evan (12 December 2022). "Webb Completes its First "Deep Field" With Nine Days of Observing Time. What did it Find?". Universe Today . Retrieved 13 December 2022.
20. Downer, Bethany (9 December 2022). "NASA's Webb Reaches New Milestone in Quest for Distant Galaxies". NASA . Retrieved 13 December 2022.
21. Robertson, B.E.; Tacchella, S.; Johnson, B.D.; et al. (May 2023). "Identification and properties of intense star-forming galaxies at redshifts z > 10". Nat Astron. 7 (5): 611–621. arXiv: 2212.04480 . Bibcode:2023NatAs...7..611R. doi:10.1038/s41550-023-01921-1 . Retrieved 1 September 2024.
22. "NASA's Webb Opens New Window on Supernova Science - NASA Science". science.nasa.gov. 10 June 2024. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
23. Collaboration, Euclid; et al. (2025). "Euclid Quick Data Release (Q1) -- Data release overview". arXiv: 2503.15302 [astro-ph.GA].