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The Hubble telescope's sharp vision has clearly seen - for the first time - hot blue stars deep inside an elliptical galaxy. Hubble confirms that the ultraviolet light emanating from this galaxy comes from a population of extremely hot, helium-burning stars at a late stage in their lives. The swarm of nearly 8,000 blue stars resembles a blizzard of snowflakes near the core of the neighboring galaxy M32, 2.5 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Andromeda.

Credit: NASA and Thomas M. Brown, Charles W. Bowers, Randy A. Kimble, Allen V. Sweigart (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) and Henry C. Ferguson (Space Telescope Science Institute).

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