British astronomers today saw the first images from an ambitious new programme of discovery, the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS). The survey will scour the sky with the world's most powerful infrared survey camera (WFCAM) to find some of the dimmest and most distant objects in the Universe. UKIDSS will reach at least twenty times deeper than the largest current survey conducted at this wavelength. Infrared light can be used to study objects that are not hot enough to show up in visible light, such as failed stars in our own Galaxy, as well as objects like distant quasars that are so far away that the expansion of the Universe has shifted their light into the infrared spectrum. UKIDSS will help to solve existing astronomical conundrums, such as when galaxies and quasars first lit up, and will certainly also discover new phenomena, because of the large area and depth.