A new Hubble Space Telescope image, released yesterday, shows what a little
patience can produce. The picture is of a spiral galaxy named NGC 3370, about
98 million light-years away.
The galaxy was imaged for the purpose of ferreting out variable stars. To do
so, astronomers needed to make pictures frequent and often. Over time, a lot
of photons were collected -- the combined exposure time amounted to about 24
hours.
So Hubble officials decided to put it all together for what they say is one
of the deepest images Hubble has ever made. This depth is most apparent in the
thousands of galaxies astronomers can see behind NGC 3370 in the highest-resolution
version of the composite photograph. (Only a handful are visible in this version,
but you can download a "massive" tiff file here.)
The image covers a region of space about 95,000 light-years wide.
Hubble's days, by the way, are numbered. NASA plans to de-orbit the venerable
observatory in 2010. It would be destroyed
during re-entry.
Did you see Hubble's new
pictures of Mars?
-- Robert
Roy Britt
