Skip to main content

There’s an asteroid surprise in this week’s Hubble image

This week’s image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a small but intriguing galaxy called UGC 7983, which is thought to be similar to some of the earliest galaxies that existed in the universe. Located 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo, it looks like a hazy fuzz and is small enough to be considered a dwarf galaxy. Its unusual shape also make it a specific type called a dwarf irregular galaxy.

As well as the galactic star of the show, the frame of the image is littered with galaxies of all types that are visible in the background, as well as many nearby stars dotting the image that are located much closer than the background galaxies.

A host of astronomical objects throng this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Background galaxies ranging from stately spirals to fuzzy ellipticals are strewn across the image, and bright foreground stars much closer to home are also present, surrounded by diffraction spikes. In the centre of the image, the vague shape of the small galaxy UGC 7983 appears as a hazy cloud of light. UGC 7983 is around 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo, and is a dwarf irregular galaxy — a type thought to be similar to the very earliest galaxies in the Universe.
A host of astronomical objects throng this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. Background galaxies ranging from stately spirals to fuzzy ellipticals are strewn across the image, and bright foreground stars much closer to home are also present, surrounded by diffraction spikes. In the center of the image, the vague shape of the small galaxy UGC 7983 appears as a hazy cloud of light. ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Tully; CC BY 4.0

Astronomers are interested in studying dwarf galaxies like this one to learn about the formation of galaxies in the early universe. Researchers know that galaxies that formed when the universe was young, in the first few billion years after the Big Bang, were quite different from most of the galaxies we see today. And we know that dwarf irregular galaxies tend to have large amounts of dust and gas in them, making them hotbeds of star formation.

Dwarf galaxies were important during a period of the universe called the Epoch of Reionization, when early stars began to spread the first light throughout the universe. That’s why the James Webb Space Telescope is studying dwarf galaxies like the nearby Small Magellanic Cloud to learn more about how early stars and galaxies may have formed.

As well as being important for learning about the early universe, there’s another interesting feature to this image too. In the top left you can see a streak of light that was created by a small asteroid which happened to be passing by when the image was taken. If you look very closely, you can see the streak is broken up into four lines, which represent the four exposures that were combined to create the final image.

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Hubble celebrates its 33rd birthday with stunning nebula image
Astronomers are celebrating the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s 33rd launch anniversary with an ethereal photo of a nearby star-forming region, NGC 1333. The nebula is in the Perseus molecular cloud, and is located approximately 960 light-years away.

It will soon be the 33rd anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, and to celebrate this milestone, Hubble scientists have shared a stunning image taken by the telescope of a picturesque nebula. NGC 1333 is a busy stellar nursery, with new stars forming among the cloud of dust and gas located 960 light-years away.

The beautiful image of the nebula shows swirls of dark dust around glowing points of light where new stars are being born. To capture this scene, Hubble used its instruments across their full wavelengths, from ultraviolet through the optical light range and into the near-infrared. Hubble took the image using its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, which used several filter across different wavelengths that were then assigned to colors (Blue: F475W, Green: F606W, Red: F657N and F814W) to create the colorful final result.

Read more
James Webb captures a stunning image of two galaxies merging
Shining like a brilliant beacon amidst a sea of galaxies, Arp 220 lights up the night sky in this view from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Actually two spiral galaxies in the process of merging, Arp 220 glows brightest in infrared light, making it an ideal target for Webb. It is an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) with a luminosity of more than a trillion suns. In comparison, our Milky Way galaxy has a much more modest luminosity of about ten billion suns.

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a gorgeous image of a dramatic cosmic event: two galaxies colliding. The two spiral galaxies are in the process of merging, and are glowing brightly in the infrared wavelength in which James Webb operates, shining with the light of more than a trillion suns.

It is not uncommon for two (or more) galaxies to collide and merge, but the two pictured in this image are giving off particularly bright infrared light. The pair has a combined name, Arp 220, as they appear as a single object when viewed from Earth. Known as an ultraluminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG), Arp 220 glows far more brightly than a typical spiral galaxy like our Milky Way.

Read more
JUICE mission to Jupiter sends back first images of Earth from space
Shortly after launch on 14 April, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, captured this stunning view of Earth. The coastline around the Gulf of Aden can be made out to the right of centre, with patchy clouds above land and sea.

The European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft, which launched last week, has sent back its first images from space -- and they are some stunning views of the Earth. The JUICE mission is on its way to explore three of Jupiter's largest moons -- Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa -- but it will be traveling for eight years before it arrives at the Jupiter system in 2031.

In the meantime, the spacecraft's cameras have been taking images pointed back at Earth. The images were captured shortly after launch on Friday, April 14, using JUICE's monitoring cameras. The two cameras are designed to watch over the spacecraft as it deploys rather than for scientific purposes, so they capture image at a relatively low resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels. Even so, they managed to get some gorgeous views of the planet as JUICE speeds away from it.

Read more