JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011

PHOTO CAPTION                                    January 13, 1994

This image of the grand design spiral galaxy M100 was obtained
with the second-generation Wide Field and Planetary Camera
installed in December 1993 in the Hubble Space Telescope.  Though
the galaxy lies several tens of millions of light-years away,
modified optics incorporated in the WFPC-II allow Hubble to view
M100 with a level of clarity and sensitivity previously possible
only for nearby galaxies.

The panel at lower left is chevron-shaped because it is a mosaic
of the instrument's three ˙wide-field cameras and one planetary
camera.  The three wide-field detectors in the camera reveal
individual stars and filamentary dust lanes in the outer arms of
the spiral galaxy.  The instrument's planetary camera image (the
smaller square at upper˙ right) resolves complex structure in the
core of the galaxy, which is the site of vigorous star formation.

The image was taken December 31, 1993, through red, green and
blue filters to create a true color picture.  Blue corresponds to
the light from young and massive stars that have recently formed
along the spiral arms.  The pinkish blobs are huge clouds of
glowing hydrogen gas.  They identify sites of new star formation. 
The field of view is about two and a half arc-minutes across.

One of the greatest gains of the high resolution provided by
Hubble is the ability to resolve individual stars in other
galaxies.  The new camera not only allows astronomers to separate
stars which would have been blurred together in the best ground-
based images, but also allows astronomers to accurately measure
the light from very faint stars.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed the Wide Field and
Planetary Camera-II for NASA's Office of Space Science.