On the 27 and 28 of October, the Hubble telescope’s prime working camera finally caught sight of this pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147.

It was the first photographic target after glitches aboard Hubble put all the instruments to sleep. These galaxies lie more than 400 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus.

UPDATE – 31/10

NASA managers announced yesterday that they will not meet a February 2009 launch date for the fifth and final shuttle mission to service the telescope. The earliest a spare computer system to replace one that faulted in September might be ready is April of 2009, they said. A firm servicing mission start date cannot be set without more testing of this system although a launch is possible in May.