Hubble snaps spectacular spiral galaxy around 260 million light-years from Earth

This latest image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features a barred spiral galaxy, named UGC 678, which lies around 260 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pisces.

As seen in the Hubble image, the galaxy has many narrow arms that are tightly twisted in the centre, but at the outer ends, they diverge in different directions. Additionally, a few smaller spiral galaxies are visible in the foreground, while numerous tiny stars and galaxies fill the black background.

In 2020, UGC 678 was found to host a spectacular event - a robotic telescope scanning the night sky in search of hazardous asteroids discovered evidence of a supernova explosion in this galaxy. A supernova is a powerful and luminous stellar explosion that occurs when a star runs out of fuel and undergoes a catastrophic collapse, either by exhausting its nuclear fuel or by accreting matter from a companion star.

Two teams of astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to scour the UGC 678 galaxy in search of the aftermath of a supernova explosion that occurred there in 2020. The astronomers used two different instruments on the Hubble - the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) - to explore the galaxy in the hope of unearthing clues to the identity of the star that produced the 2020 supernova.

📷 This NASA/ESA @HUBBLE_space Telescope image showcases the barred spiral galaxy UGC 678.💥Recently, an enormous supernova explosion was discovered in the galaxy by a robotic telescope scanning the night sky in search of dangerous asteroids.👉 https://t.co/ARrVYQGbJ1 pic.twitter.com/mK3tF0amrv

— ESA (@esa) April 17, 2023

Over the past three decades, Hubble has made many groundbreaking discoveries in astronomy, including the first direct evidence for dark matter, the measurement of the expansion rate of the universe, and the detection of thousands of exoplanets orbiting other stars. Launched in 1990, the telescope continues to be a vital tool for astronomers.