The Hubble space telescope was launched on April 24th 1990 on the space shuttle Discovery. In the 21 years since its installation in orbit around Earth it has taken some of the most amazing photographs of space ever recorded.
Earlier this month Hubble was pointed at a pair of interacting galaxies known as ARP 273 which are about 340 million light years away. That means that the light from them has taken 340 million years to reach Earth.
The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, has a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813.
If you click on the picture you can see a larger version. More detail is available on the Hubble website.
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