This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows many astronomical objects. Background galaxies are scattered throughout the image, ranging from majestic spirals to blurry ellipses, and there are also bright stars in the foreground.
In the center of the image, the vague shape of the small galaxy UGC 7983 looks like a hazy glowing cloud. UGC 7983 lies about 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo and is a dwarf irregular galaxy, a type thought to be similar to the earliest galaxies in the universe.
This image also reveals an astronomical intruder. A small asteroid, only a few kilometers wide, is visible at the top left of this image. The trail of the asteroid is shown in the image as four streaks of light separated by small gaps. These streaks of light represent the four separate exposures that were combined to create this image, with small gaps between each observation needed to change filters in the Hubble camera.
The asteroid came into the frame by accident, since the Hubble was used at that time to observe every known galaxy close to the Milky Way.
A source: ESA / Hubble & NASA, R. Tully.
