Galaxies, Galaxies, Galaxies

Hundreds of galaxies blaze in this recent Hubble Space Telescope image of a small region of the southern sky. This is a small section of a larger image compiled over many days of observations. The image was obtained to help astronomers trace the birth of stars over the last 11 billion years, to a time when the universe was less than four billion years old. This section shows many spiral galaxies, including some that are interacting with each other. Some are face-on, but many are viewed from the side, so they look like slashes. [NASA/ESA/P. Oesch (University of Geneva)/M. Montes (University of New South Wales)]