a technical glitch causes the hubble space

A technical glitch causes the Hubble Space Telescope, which ordinarily captures magnificently crisp scientific imagery of the cosmos, to lose balance and create this inadvertent piece of modern art.

It is suspected that in this case, Hubble had locked onto a bad guide star, potentially a double star or binary. This caused an error in the tracking system, resulting in this remarkable picture of brightly colored stellar streaks. The prominent red streaks are from stars in the globular cluster NGC 288.