Check out this magnificent picture of the 68-million-light-year distant spiral galaxy NGC 3892 taken by Hubble:
OOooo, pretty! Click to engalactinate (or go here to grab a monstrous 2500x2600 pixel shot). I've written about images like this before: why there are spiral arms, how the red light denotes hydrogen gas, the location of active star birth; the reddish-yellow glow of the core indicating old stars. But what amazed me most about this picture -- besides its sheer beauty -- is that it's composed of images from three separate generations of Hubble cameras! The Wide Field/Planetary Camera 2 was installed on Hubble in 1993, the Advanced Camera for Surveys went up in 2002, and the Wide Field Camera 3 last year in 2009. All three took images that were used to make this lovely portrait of the spiral galaxy; images that span nearly a decade of time between them. One of ...
