This montage compares ground-based and HST (before and after the December 1993 servicing mission) views of the spiral galaxy M100 = NGC 4321 in the Virgo cluster. The upper panels show an R-band CCD image taken from Kitt Peak in reasonably good seeing conditions (image FWHM near 1 arcsecond). The inset indicates (except for a rotation) the region shown in the lower set of early-release Space Telescope pictures (themselves nabbed from stsci.edu). The structure of the inner part of this galaxy is almost completely lost in the ground-based picture. I'm not too sure I need to save that archive tape...
Last changes: 5/2001 © 2001