Thousands of images reveal the deepest view of night sky

A decade's worth of Hubble Space Telescope images have been pieced together to unveil the deepest, darkest view yet of the night sky.

Astronomers' illustrations showcase a collection of more than 2,000 images of galaxies and other celestial objects, taken by Hubble's Advanced for Surveys and near-infrared cameras.

The cameras combined to form the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, capturing images of the depths of the universe.

The latest work unveiled on NASA's website adds another 5,500 galaxies to Hubble's 2003 and 2004 findings.

Hubble has been able to rack up an additional two million seconds of exposure time.

The most distant objects found thus far date back to about 500 million years after the universe's formation some 13.7 billion years ago.

The early universe was a violent place, filled with colliding and merging galaxies that radiate in bright blue light, a telltale sign of new star formation.

The Hubble portrait also shows brilliantly shining spiral galaxies and older red fuzzy galaxies whose star-formation days are over.