I hope Lab Notes readers got their votes in. As I blogged last month, NASA had invited people to weigh in on what additional target the Hubble Space Telescope should photograph during the International Year of Astronomy's “100 Hours of Astronomy,” taking place April 2 to 5. The winner is (sorry, planetary nebulae, spiral galaxy, star-forming region and edge-on galaxy): a pair of interacting galaxies.
Out of the 139,944 votes cast online since January 28, nearly 50 percent went to the interacting pair of spiral galaxies called Arp 274. (To find it yourself--or at least the general neighborhood, go here) It’s a good choice, since interacting galaxies “weave elegant twisted lanes of dust and stars, and brilliant blue clusters of newborn stars,” a NASA announcement says.
We’ll see what Hubble comes up with next month.