This brilliant image celebrates the 19th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. Taken in January 2009, it is one of the last images by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). This successful instrument has taken some of the most famous pictures of space, such as the Eagle Nebula pillars (CERN Courier March 2007 p11) and the Hubble Deep Field. It was scheduled to be replaced by a new camera (WFPC3) installed by the crew of the Atlantis Space Shuttle that lifted off on 11 May. The image shows a group of interacting galaxies known as Arp 194 located 600 million light-years away in the constellation of Cepheus. The colliding galaxies are at the top of the image, while the bottom galaxy is in the background. The blue spiral arm that seems to connect them is a stream of star-forming gas ejected during the process of galaxy merging.
Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).
CERN Courier
Jun 8, 2009
Picture of the month
About the author
Compiled by Marc Türler, INTEGRAL Science Data Centre and Observatory of Geneva University.