The Hubble Space Telescope, with a clear view of the cosmos from its orbit above the 
Earth's turbulent and distorting atmosphere, has once again produced images of the 
universe of outstanding clarity and beauty.

Using its wide field camera it has peered deep into the heart of a nearby galaxy and 
witnessed a dramatic flurry of stars being born out of vast clouds of gas and dust.

The galaxy, called NGC 1808, is 40 million light years distant - close in astronomical 
terms. It is a collection of a hundred thousand million stars. It is colliding with a 
companion galaxy which is not shown in the image.

The collision sends shock waves rippling through the two galaxies that triggers clouds 
of gas into forming thousands of stars. In the image the clusters of new stars appear 
blue. Astronomers believe that there are over 1,000 such starburst clusters.

Some of the stars are short lived and last only a million years or so. They then 
explode in a violent explosion called a supernova. These explosions eject clouds of gas 
and filaments of dust that makes the heart of NGC 1808 a violent and chaotic place.

The image taken by the Hubble Telescope shows star clusters amid thick lanes of gas and 
dust. The image shows a region 300 light years across, a light year is 6 million million 
miles. Such observations help astronomers to understand how our own Sun was born from 
similar clouds some five billion years ago.