Over the past decade, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and other modern, giant telescopes have opened a new era in observational cosmology. By staring for long times at so-called "dark fields"—regions of the sky without much background emission from the solar system or the galaxy—astronomers have been able to detect very faint galaxies in the early universe, and to study their evolution from early stages to the present. More recently, deep multi-wavelength imaging surveys have been undertaken, and have revealed a complex interplay between galaxy mergers, star formation, and black holes over cosmic time, leading to new insights into the physical processes that drive galaxy formation and evolution.
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