HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE DEEP-SKY SURVEY FINDS
                INTERACTING GALAXIES IN A CLUSTER


A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a previously unknown small group
of galaxies estimated to be three billion light-years away*.  They
existed when the universe was only about 80% its present age.

HST's high resolution reveals that many appear to be interacting and
merging galaxies.  In many cases, at least one member of each pair is
blue in color, indicating active star formation, possibly triggered by
interaction with a neighbor galaxy.

The observations promise to eventually lead to a much clearer
understanding of galaxy evolution.

This image is part of a serendipitous sky survey which has been
conducted over the past two years by Prof. Richard Griffiths and
colleagues at Johns Hopkins University, with a team of astronomers in
the U.S. and Britain.

The survey is one of several Key Projects for Hubble.  In previous
images the deep survey has uncovered a bizarre variety of shape and
structure in distant galaxies, which only previously appeared as fuzzy
blobs from ground based telescopes.


credit:  Richard Griffiths, The Johns Hopkins University and NASA


*The distance to the largest galaxy in the image has been measured by
Prof. Rogier Windhorst and his group at Arizona State University, using
the Multi-Mirror Telescope in Arizona, operated by the University of
Arizona and the Smithsonian Institution.


CONTACT:  Ray Villard, STScI
          (410) 338-4514

          Dr. Richard Griffiths
          (410) 516-4194


PHOTO CAPTION  STScI-PR93-23b

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The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of
Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc.  (AURA) for NASA, under
contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.  The
Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation
between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).