The MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope has given astronomers the best ever three-dimensional view of the deep Universe. After staring at the Hubble Deep Field South region for a total of 27 hours the new observations reveal the distances, motions and other properties of far more galaxies than ever before in this tiny piece of the sky. But they also go beyond Hubble and reveal many previously unseen objects.

This ESOcast explains what makes the new MUSE observations so significant and shows how astronomers interpret three-dimensional datacubes of the distant Universe.

Credit/Courtesy: ESO