The image, which looks deeply into a patch of sky the size of the full Moon, may contain up to 60,000 galaxies. It is a rogues gallery of galaxy types and activities, including spirals, ellipticals and galactic collisions.

Mosaic of 80 bright galaxies from the GEMS survey illustrates the diversity of galaxy shapes, sizes and types: watermelon-shaped ellipticals, majestic spirals, some with elongated bars in their centers, and spectacular galaxy mergers.

One GEMS image shows two separate pairs galaxies getting together. In the foreground are two interacting spiral galaxies; while in the distant background is another pair of interacting spiral galaxies. It's that galactic interaction and merging that researchers believe is responsible for the formation of elliptical galaxies, structures with little star formation seen throughout the mosaic.

While none of the galaxies appears as sharp or stunning as in other Hubble pictures that focus on single objects, the new stiched-together image is valuable to astronomers.

Such a variety of galaxies over such a large patch of sky -- much of space imaging focuses on very tiny areas of the cosmos -- should improve understanding of how galaxies formed and how they develop massive black holes at their cores, researchers said. The image can also help astronomers understand how galaxies collect together into larger groups.

"This is the largest Hubble Space Telescope color image ever taken, and it will be for years to come," said Eric Bell, as astronomer with Germanys Max Planck-Institute for Astronomy. "But what were interested in is the physics of why these galaxies form, not just in pretty pictures though those are nice too."

Bell unveiled the image here Thursday near the end of the 203rd national meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Based on the study, there might be some 1.6 billion galaxies Milky Way-like galaxies stretching out to nine billion light-years distant, he added. One light-year is the distance light travels in one year, about six trillion miles or 9.5 trillion kilometers.

The mosaic is a patchwork of 78 individual pictures that look nine billion years into the past, when the universe was just one-third its current age. Bell's team focused on just 10,000 galaxies in their study because their distances to Earth were already known.

"[The study] is really a time probe that allows us to piece together the cosmic puzzle of galaxy evolution," said team member Shardha Jogee, with the Space Telescope Science Institute, which runs Hubble.

Since the mosaic is so large its more than 150 times bigger than the Hubble Deep Field survey it gives astronomers a better perspective of the universe when it was only about five billion years old. The universe is currently believed to have started about 13.7 billion years ago.

"Its like looking at a map of the United States at night," Bell said. "If you focus in too close on a city or sparse forest, you dont get a good picture of the overall distribution of people." Galaxies are much the same way, and to understand how they are distributed, astronomers need a wider view.

The image is a product of the GEMS study (short for Galaxy Evolution from Morphology and Spectral energy distribution) aimed at better understanding the nature of galaxies in the universe.

Astronomers used Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and data from the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey to assemble the great galactic view.