A bright star captures new image of a galaxy full of new stars.
The Hubble Space Telescope, which is a joint mission of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), photographed an irregular galaxy known as Arp 263, or NGC 3239. This galaxy is located approximately 25 million light years from Earth in the constellation Leo.
The Arp 263 galaxy is seen to the left of the bright star in this new Hubble image. A bright star called BD+17 2217 dominates the telescope’s view.
Arp 263 has dense and vibrant regions of recently formed stars, making it appear patchy. Astronomers say this patchwork is the result of a recent merger between two galaxies, a statement from the ESA.
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The images come from two different Hubble cameras: the Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys.
“The overlapping foreground star, BD+17 2217, is dotted with two pairs of alternating diffraction spikes. The interaction of light with Hubble’s internal structure means that a concentrated bright object such as a star is surrounded by four prominent spikes,” ESA officials said in the statement.
“Because this image … was created using two Hubble data sets, the spikes from both images surround the photobomber of this star. The spikes are at different angles because Hubble was at different orientations when collecting the two data sets.”
The data used to produce the images was taken as part of two separate studies to observe areas of recent stellar explosions, called supernovae, and to identify target subjects for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. These next-generation telescopes are peering deep into the history of the universe, often using Hubble data as a guide.
About 10 years ago, a supernova or stellar explosion known as SN 2012A was detected in Arp 263, making the galaxy an ideal candidate for further investigation.
A supernova occurs when a massive star reaches the end of its life and explodes in a brilliant burst of light, releasing massive amounts of material into space. Astronomers are targeting this area to study stellar remnants from massive stellar explosions, which are believed to play a key role in distributing essential elements throughout the universe.
Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys is being used as part of a larger initiative to image all previously unobserved “strange galaxies” in the Arp catalog, including Arp 263.
Its ragged appearance is likely the result of a collision between two galaxies, creating the perfect environment for new star formation (represented as a bright pink patch in the image).
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2023-07-24 23:13:52
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