"Life is too short to watch TV."

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, deep field

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope

Late in December of 1995, the director of the Hubble Space Telescope found himself with 10 days of discretionary time on the telescope.  Normally this time would be allocated to other astronomers to make up for telescope time they might have lost during the year. With this windfall of telescope time, the director chose a small but typical section of the sky void of bright stars. 

The image, called the Hubble Deep Field (HDF), image covers a piece of the sky only about the width of a dime located 75 feet away.  Most of the galaxies seen are so faint (nearly 30th magnitude or about four-billion times fainter than can be seen by the human eye) they have never before been seen by even the largest telescopes.  This is the deepest astromomical picture ever taken, thus in one sense, this the oldest photograph ever taken.  Most of these galaxies emitted the light captured in this photograph more than 10 billion years ago.