[iceman (Mike)]

In March, NASA unveiled the Hubble Space Telescope's Ultra Deep Field (UDF), an 11.3-day exposure that represents humanity's deepest optical look into the universe. Althought it’s smattered with beautiful spiral and elliptical galaxies lying a few billion light-years from Earth, several teams of astronomers have focused on the faintest, farthest objects in the UDF — tiny red smudges that are barely discernible. While not exactly eye candy, these smudges were primarily responsible for one of the universe's most critical transitions: reionization.