Mining for Cosmic Treasures

The new mosaic, taken by the orbiting observatory's Advanced Camera for Surveys, is the largest color photograph ever made by the telescope, covering an area of sky about the apparent size of the full moon. To construct the image, a team of astronomers stitched together 78 separate exposures showing the region around the constellation Fornax in the Southern Hemisphere. The astronomers compared constructing the mosaic to making a big picture of a mountain range by pasting together individual pictures of each mountain.