Hubble's Sweet 16

By Aussiegirl

Be sure to visit this website to see these glorious, awe-inspiring, humbling snapshots of our beautiful universe, our home. Here is the description of the photo I chose to illustrate this post:

This long-exposure, composite photo is the deepest-ever view of the universe. It looks back to the edge of the big bang, and shows a chaotic scramble of odd galaxies smashing into each other and re-forming in bizarre shapes. The image required 800 exposures taken over the course of 400 Hubble orbits around Earth. The total amount of exposure time was 11.3 days, taken between Sept. 24, 2003, and Jan. 16, 2004.

Wired News: Hubble's Sweet 16

Celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope's 16 years of service, NASA and the European Space Agency have issued new high-resolution photos of the starburst Messier 82 galaxy. The images show the birth of hundreds of young stars at the core of the so-called Cigar Galaxy. Wired News' Hubble's Sweet 16 gallery also contains some of the most spectacular Hubble shots from recent years. All images are courtesy of NASA. Visit the ESA's Hubble site for more info.