Observes the Lost Ancestors to Our Milky Way Galaxy

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES

09.21.2009

Courtesy Photo

NASA

*Description*: This NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of the central portion of a remote cluster of galaxies (CL 0939+4713) as it looked when the universe was two-thirds of its present age. Hubble's high resolution allows astronomers to study, for the first time, the shapes of galaxies as they were long ago. The Space Telescope pictures are sharp enough to distinguish between various forms of spiral galaxies. Most of the spiral, or disk, galaxies have odd features, suggesting they were easily distorted within the environment of the rich cluster. Hubble reveals a number of mysterious "fragments" of galaxies interspersed through the cluster. The HST picture confirms that billions of years ago, clusters of galaxies contained not only the types of galaxies dominating their descendant clusters today, but also several times as many spiral galaxies. These spiral galaxies have since disappeared through mergers and disruptions, as evident in the Hubble image. This visible light image was taken with HST's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in Wide Field Camera mode, on January 10 and 12, 1994. Technical facts about this news release: Back to entire collection [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/index/536/ ] Next release [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1994/55/ ] Previous release [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1994/52/ ] *News Release Number:*: STScI-1994-25a

NASA Identifier: SPD-HUBBLE-STScI-1994-25a

• Date Taken: 09.21.2009
• Date Posted: 10.10.2012 15:15
• Photo ID: 703141
• Resolution: 1536x1475
• Size: 404.28 KB
• Location: WASHINGTON, DC, US