Hubble sent an image of the galaxy UGC 7983
(ORDO NEWS) — Many astronomical objects are captured in an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Among the background galaxies, one can see both elliptical galaxies and majestic spirals. Some of the bright foreground stars are surrounded by diffraction flares.
In the center of the image, the faint outline of the small galaxy UGC 7983 is visible. UGC 7983 is located about 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
This is an irregular dwarf galaxy. This type of galaxy is thought to be similar to the earliest galaxies in the universe.
A small asteroid, only a few kilometers across, can be seen at the top left of this image.
The trail from the asteroid looks like four streaks of light, separated by small gaps. These streaks of light represent four separate exposures that were combined to create this image.
The capture of the asteroid was a happy side effect of larger observations from the Every Known Nearby Galaxy program.
When this project was first proposed, approximately 75% of all of the Milky Way’s nearest galactic neighbors were photographed by Hubble.
A group of astronomers have proposed using the gaps between longer Hubble observations to image the remaining 25%.
The project was an effective way to fill in some of the gaps not only in Hubble’s observing schedule, but also in our knowledge of nearby galaxies.
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