UGC 10214 (or the "Tadpole") was imaged by Hubble's new Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument, installed in March during Servicing Mission 3B. The galaxy lies at a distance of 420 million light-years in the constellation Draco.
The 280,000 light-year long tail of material was strung out as a result of a near-miss with another galaxy, distinctly blue in colour, still just visible in the top-left of UGC 10214. As with many galactic collisions, the event has created hundreds of young blue star clusters, lying along the tail and within the main disc of UGC 10214.
Worthy of note is the stunning backdrop of galaxies, some of which are more distant than those featured in Hubble's famous "Deep Field" image from 1995, taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). This indicates the great improvements in resolving power built into the new ACS instrument.
