Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Hubble captures a sparkling cloud galaxy located right next door

Georgina Torbet
By

An image from the Hubble Space Telescope shared this week by NASA shows a nearby galaxy, ESO 300-16. Unlike our Milky Way, which is a type called a spiral galaxy with a clear central bulge and defined spiral arms reaching out from its center, this neighborhood galaxy is loose and diffuse, looking more like a spattering of stars than anything with a clear structure. Hubble scientists describe it as a “sparkling cloud.”

The galaxy is a type called an irregular galaxy, due to its lack of clear shape. Its stars clump together in a soft bubble form, and it is located nearly 29 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Eridanus.

The galaxy ESO 300-16 looms over this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy, which lies 28.7 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, is a ghostly assemblage of stars which resembles a sparkling cloud. Other distant galaxies and foreground stars complete this astronomical portrait, which was captured by the Advanced Camera for Surveys.
The galaxy ESO 300-16 looms over this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy, which lies 28.7 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, is a ghostly assemblage of stars that resembles a sparkling cloud. Other distant galaxies and foreground stars complete this astronomical portrait, which was captured by the Advanced Camera for Surveys. ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Tully

“This observation is one of a series which aims to get to know our galactic neighbors,” Hubble scientists explain in a statement. “Hubble has observed around three-quarters of known galaxies within about 10 megaparsecs of Earth in enough detail to resolve their brightest stars and establish distances to these galaxies. A team of astronomers proposed using small gaps in Hubble’s observing schedule to acquaint ourselves with the remaining quarter of these nearby galaxies.”

Recommended Videos

The project is called Every Known Nearby Galaxy and is designed to maximize Hubble’s observing time. Time on Hubble is in high demand, so astronomers have to submit proposals for how and why they want to use Hubble for their observations far in advance. This is a competitive process, with experts deciding what the best of use Hubble’s limited time would be and filling out the schedule as much as they can. However, there are some small gaps between observations, such as when the telescope has to move to point to different parts of the sky for different observations.

Related

Researchers make use of this 2-3% of time on Hubble which isn’t going toward primary observations to make other smaller observations like the Every Known Nearby Galaxy project. This has resulted in a series of images of our galactic neighbors, including ghostly galaxy NGC 6684, fuzzy galaxy LEDA 48062, and dwarf galaxy UGCA 307.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Small exoplanet could be hot and steamy according to Hubble
This is an artist’s conception of the exoplanet GJ 9827d, the smallest exoplanet where water vapour has been detected in its atmosphere. The planet could be an example of potential planets with water-rich atmospheres elsewhere in our galaxy. It is a rocky world, only about twice Earth’s diameter. It orbits the red dwarf star GJ 9827. Two inner planets in the system are on the left. The background stars are plotted as they would be seen to the unaided eye looking back toward our Sun, which itself is too faint to be seen. The blue star at upper right is Regulus, the yellow star at bottom centre is Denebola, and the blue star at bottom right is Spica. The constellation Leo is on the left, and Virgo is on the right. Both constellations are distorted from our Earth-bound view from 97 light-years away.

One of the big topics in exoplanet research right now is not just finding exoplanets but also looking at their atmospheres. Tools like the James Webb Space Telescope are designed to allow researchers to look at the light coming from distant stars and see how it is filtered as it passes by exoplanets, allowing them to learn about the composition of their atmospheres. But scientists are also using older telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope for similar research -- and Hubble recently identified water vapor in an exoplanet atmosphere.

“This would be the first time that we can directly show through an atmospheric detection that these planets with water-rich atmospheres can actually exist around other stars,” said researcher Björn Benneke of the Université de Montréal in a statement. “This is an important step toward determining the prevalence and diversity of atmospheres on rocky planets."

Read more
Hear the otherworldly sounds of interacting galaxies with this Hubble sonification
This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image showcases a resplendent pair of galaxies known as Arp 140.

When two different galaxies get close enough together that they begin interacting, they are sometimes given a shared name. That's the case with a newly released image from the Hubble Space Telescope that shows two galaxies, NGC 274 and NGC 275, which are together known as Arp 140. not only is there a new image of the pair, but there's also a sonification available so you can hear the image as well as see it.

This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image showcases a resplendent pair of galaxies known as Arp 140. NASA/ESA/R. Foley (University of California - Santa Cruz)/Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

Read more
Hubble captures an exceptionally luminous supernova site
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image is of the small galaxy known as UGC 5189A.

This week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the aftermath of an epic explosion in space caused by the death of a massive star.

Some of the most dramatic events in the cosmos are supernovas, when a massive star runs out of fuel to fuse -- first running out of hydrogen, then helium, then burning through heavier elements -- and eventually can no longer sustain the outward pressure from heat caused by this fusion. When that happens, the star collapses suddenly into a dense core, and its outer layers are thrown off in a tremendous explosion called a Type II supernova.

Read more