Happy Birthday Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope is 18 years old today and in honor of its birthday, NASA has released some astounding photos of what it calls “peculiar galaxies”. The photos are striking in their clarity, especially considering some of the images are as much as 350 million light years away.

These images not only arouse my scientific curiosity but they fill me with a sense of wonder that I remember as a child when looking at the night sky through my telescope in the backyard. Seeing objects hundreds of millions of light years away really puts my place in the universe in perspective.

The image here is of two spiral galaxies in the first stages of collision.