Grand-Design Spiral Galaxy M100

This image of the grand-design spiral galaxy M100 was taken on December 31, 1993, after the installation of the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on Hubble. It was one of the first images to show the vast improvement to the telescope after the first servicing mission, during which astronauts installed new instruments, including equipment to correct for a flaw in Hubble's primary mirror that affected the clarity of its early images. The picture's stair-step shape, results from the design of WFPC2. The upper-right quarter of the camera's detector was designed for high-magnification planetary imaging. Used in conjunction with the other three quarters of the detector to form a single, wide-field view requires this section of the image to be shrunk to match the scale of the others, leaving a portion blank (dark).