In December 1995, Robert Williams, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, used his discretionary time to point the Hubble Space Telescope at a blank patch of sky in Ursa Major, roughly one twenty-four-millionth of the sky, for ten days. It was an enormous gamble with the most sought-after camera in human history, and it returned an image containing about 3,000 galaxies in what had looked like empty darkness. This episode reconstructs how the Hubble Deep Field was planned, captured, processed, and interpreted, and why it reshaped our understanding of cosmic history.

We start with Hubble's flawed primary mirror and the 1993 servicing mission that fixed it, then walk through the rigorous target selection: avoiding the Milky Way's zone of avoidance and infrared cirrus, choosing the northern continuous viewing zone so ground telescop ...