Distant Galaxy BX442

Galaxies that are 10 billion light-years away aren't supposed to exhibit spiral structure. They're supposed to be too young and primordial for that. Therefore when astronomers David Law and Alice Shapley discovered such an anomalous galaxy using the Hubble Space Telescope, they knew they had something worth writing about. Dr. Law commissioned me to produce this closeup illustration of the precocious galaxy, very useful for publicity, given that the original HST image is only about 30 pixels across.