[hosepipe]

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/07/image/a/

[Roscoe Karns]

[knews_hound]

Thoughts?

[Abin Sur]

Galaxy cluster Abell 1689:

The yellow galaxies in this image belong to the cluster itself, however, the red and blue distorted streaks are background galaxies gravitationally lensed by the cluster. Some of the lensed galaxies are over 13 billion light years (4000 megaparsec) distant. The lensing zone itself is 2 million light years (0.60 megaparsec) across.

[Abin Sur]

Pictures like these are wonderful, but they have one (tiny) negative unintended consequence: they occasionally lead to disappointment when someone looks through an amateur (or even semi-pro) telescope for the first time.

They've grown up seeing pictures like this, and they expect to see something like that through the scope, and instead when they look at the Orion Nebula with their naked eye for the first time, their reaction is "But...it's just some green fuzz! Shouldn't it look like the Mutara Nebula in Star Trek II?"

[bannie]

Perty stuff. :-) Thanks!

[saganite]

The Hershel IR scope took photos of IR Galaxies which aren't visible to us because there's so much dust between us we can't view them except in the IR spectrum.