A packed field of galaxies and curved blue streaks and arcs. Bright blue-white foreground star at bottom right.

Hubble Sees Nearby Asteroids Photobombing Distant Galaxies

Galaxy cluster Abell 370 contains several hundred galaxies tied together by the mutual pull of gravity. Photographed in a combination of visible and near-infrared light, the brightest and largest galaxies are the yellow-white, massive, elliptical galaxies containing many hundreds of billions of stars each. Spiral galaxies have younger populations of stars and are bluish. Mysterious-looking arcs of blue light are distorted images of remote galaxies behind the cluster. The cluster acts as a huge lens in space that magnifies and stretches images of background galaxies like a funhouse mirror.

Credits: NASA, ESA, J. Lotz, and the HFF Team (STScI)