This historic image is expected to take astronomers to 'within a stone's throw' of the the big bang itself, unveiling the first galaxies that emerged from the end of the cosmological "dark ages" shortly after the big bang, or when the universe was about 5 percent of its present age.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field as observed with Hubble's two premier cameras, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), will be unveiled to the news media and public on March 9, 2004 during a live webcast starting at 9:00 am (EST) at: http://www.stsci.edu/institute/center/information/streaming/HubbleUltraDeepField

News media not at the STScI during the live webcast can e-mail questions to newsquestions@stsci.edu .

High-resolution images, broadcast quality videos, and other information will be posted at 9:30 am (EST)/15:30 (CET) on: http://hubblesite.org/news/2004/07 and telescope.org">http://www.spacetelescope.org

The science data products will be available to the astronomy community at 10:00 am (EST)/16:00 (CET) on March 9 on: http://www.stsci.edu/hst/udf, http://www.stecf.org/UDF/, and http://cadcwww.dao.nrc.ca/hst/