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by privong·11y ago·view on hn ↗
> Also, the Hubble can't even see most of the Observable Universe; it can see ~15 billion lights years away, whereas the radius of the observable universe is 47 billion light years.

There is a subtlety with the size of the observable Universe versus the distance Hubble can see. The radius of the observable universe is 47 billion lights years (the radial distance to the cosmic microwave background[0]). Hubble has spotted galaxies whose distance corresponds to a light travel time of ~13 billion years. However, the Universe has expanded since that light was emitted 13 billion years ago, so the galaxies which emitted that light are now about 30 billion light years away. So Hubble can see objects which are closer to the edge of the observable Universe than the 13 billion year light travel time implies, compared with the size of the observable universe. There are tentative detections of even more distant galaxies.

For reference, I obtained those values using Ned Wright's cosmology calculator[1] with a redshift z=8, and the default values, assuming a flat cosmology. The 13 billion years ago number is the light travel time and the 30 billion light year distance is the comoving radial distance.

[0] If you plug the approximate redshift of the cosmic microwave background (z=1100) into [1], you get 45.5 billion light years.

[1] http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html

Edit: Clarified wording and added CMB distance info.