QUESTION:
How far can the Hubble Space Telescope see?

ANSWER from Mike Meakes on March 26, 1996:
That's a very interesting question to astronomers and cosmologists as well.

Before the Hubble Space Telescope was launched almost all of the telescopes
and observatories where on the ground. As the telescopes grew in size
astronomers would look out into space to try and see the faintest most
distant things they could. And each time they would find new things farther
away than before. But they never did run out of things to find. The things
just got too dim to observe through the atmosphere.

When the Hubble Space Telescope was being built, we tried to make it with the
ability to see out to the "edge" of the universe as clearly as possible. But
there is a big question for us! Where IS the edge of the universe, how far
away is it and how could we tell if we are seeing it? Nobody has seen the edge
or even knows for sure that one really exists. The Big Bang theory tells us
that an edge should be out there. And our best information and data seems
to indicate that the edge should be out somewhere between 10 billion and
20 billion light years. Usually astronomers think it is closer to 10 billion
light years. A light year is the distance that light will travel in one year.
Since light travels at 186,282 miles per second, a light year is about
5,880,000,000,000 miles.

So far the Hubble Space Telescope has looked at a lot of galaxies and quasars
that are believed to be out near that edge. One set of pictures taken last
December, called the Hubble Deep Field, has galaxies that are believed to be
about 1 billion light years from the edge! That means the Hubble Space
Telescope has seen things 9 billion light years, or more, away. We can still
take pictures that may show things farther away. The telescope has not yet
been pushed to the limit of its ability to see the farthest and faintest
things it can.