Hubble captures an ultra-diffuse galaxy 4 billion light-years from Earth: See pic

GAMA 526784, which appears as a tenuous patch of light in the latest image, was captured using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured GAMA 526784, an ultra-diffuse galaxy that resides in the constellation Hydra, roughly four billion light-years from Earth. This image, which comes from a set of Hubble observations designed to shed light on the properties of ultra-diffuse galaxies, was shared by the European Space Agency (ESA) on Monday, April 25.

GAMA 526784, which appears as a tenuous patch of light in the latest image, was captured using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). ACS was installed on the telescope during Servicing Mission 3B in 2002.

📷 This NASA/ESA @HUBBLE_space image shows ultra-diffuse galaxy GAMA 526784. These galaxies have a number of peculiarities, e.g., either an extremely low or extremely high #darkmatter content, plus an anomalous abundance of bright globular clusters 👉 https://t.co/Fu14GWHyMn pic.twitter.com/dUBSV4Dzws

— ESA (@esa) April 25, 2022

While all galaxies appear to be dominated by dark matter, the invisible glue that makes up the bulk of the universe's matter, ultra-diffuse galaxies have been observed with an almost complete lack of dark matter.

Ultra-diffuse galaxies such as GAMA 526784 have either extremely low or extremely high dark matter content. Another oddity of this class of galaxies, according to ESA, is their anomalous abundance of bright globular clusters, something not observed in other types of galaxies.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 32nd year of operations. Launched on 24 April 1990, the space-based observatory has made more than 1.5 million observations of about 50,000 celestial objects and more than 19,000 scientific papers have been published by astronomers using Hubble data.