The eXtreme Deep Field image captured by the Hubble Space telescope is all the more amazing for the detail it shows of such a tiny patch of sky.

The more than 5,000 galaxies visible in the image take up an area of the sky that, from Earth, is less than a tenth of the diameter of the Moon.

The image required Hubble to stare at the tiny patch of sky for more than 500 hours to detect all the light in the image.

Jon Amos reports.

Footage courtesy of NASA, ESA, and STScI