A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

That's how the movie, "Star Wars" began. This photograph, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is a literal depiction of that phrase.

You see only one star in this photo. The bright, white object with rays extending out from it is actually a star in our Milky Way Galaxy. All the other objects in the photo are other galaxies extending off into the distance to the edge of the observable universe. This scene actually is a look back through time, since the light from the most distant of these galaxies has taken around 10 billion years to reach us, while the light from the nearer galaxies has taken several million years. The light from the one star in the scene has taken only thousands of years to reach us.

Fascinating, isn't it?

You'll find more Hubble Space Telescope pictures here.