Ten days pointed at nothing

Hubble spent ten days staring at a patch of empty sky near the Plough, about the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length, and found around three thousand galaxies in it.

The director spent his own discretionary time on it over objections that it would come back blank. It did not: almost every smudge in the frame is a galaxy, and the faintest are being seen as they were when the universe was a tenth of its present age.