Hubble Finds Galactic Candy Store

News
By published
Hubble Finds Galactic Candy Store
The Hubble Space Telescope spies a wide variety of galaxies in a patch of sky only a fraction of the size of a full moon. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted of acollection of galaxies with more variety than a candy store.

Some are big; some aresmall. Some are old; some are new. Some are nearby; some are far away.

But one thing many of thehundreds of galaxies have in common is that they've never been seen untilHubble recently captured their light.

The smaller galaxies areactually just further away and are faint because their light has taken billionsof years to reach us. So, in fact, the light from these galaxies is coming froma much younger version than what exists - or doesn't - today.

At least a dozen stars fromour own MilkyWay Galaxy dot the foreground of this image, the brightest of which is thelarge red object in the center. Stars are easily spotted by their diffractionspikes - the long cross hair lines that come from their centers. These are animage artifact caused when starlight travels through a telescope's opticalsystem.

Bjorn Carey
Bjorn Carey is the science information officer at Stanford University. He has written and edited for various news outlets, including Live Science's Life's Little Mysteries, Space.com and Popular Science. When it comes to reporting on and explaining wacky science and weird news, Bjorn is your guy. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his beautiful son and wife.