Editing Hubble Deep Field (section)

==Contents==
The final images were released at a meeting of the [[American Astronomical Society]] in January 1996,<ref name="key_findings">{{cite web |date=1997 |url=http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/97/hdf-key-findings.html |title=Summary of Key Findings From the Hubble Deep Field |access-date=December 26, 2008 |publisher=Space Telescope Science Institute |archive-url=https://archive.today/20110701011536/http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/97/hdf-key-findings.html |archive-date=July 1, 2011}}</ref> and revealed a plethora of distant, faint galaxies. About 3,000 distinct galaxies could be identified in the images,<ref name="Ferguson2000b">Ferguson et al. (2000b)</ref> with both [[irregular galaxy|irregular]] and [[spiral galaxy|spiral galaxies]] clearly visible, although some galaxies in the field are only a few pixels across. In all, the HDF is thought to contain fewer than twenty galactic foreground stars; by far the majority of objects in the field are distant galaxies.<ref name="Flynn1996" />

There are about fifty blue point-like objects in the HDF. Many seem to be associated with nearby galaxies, which together form chains and arcs: these are likely to be regions of intense [[star formation]]. Others may be distant [[quasar]]s. Astronomers initially ruled out the possibility that some of the point-like objects are [[white dwarf]]s, because they are too blue to be consistent with theories of white dwarf evolution prevalent at the time. However, more recent work has found that many white dwarfs become bluer as they age, lending support to the idea that the HDF might contain white dwarfs.<ref name="Hansen1998">Hansen (1998)</ref>