Hubble has been NASA’s “eye in the sky” for nearly 30 years. During these decades, the iconic space telescope has continually astounded NASA astronomers with ever-deeper images of the Universe. Now NASA has released a faint Hubble photograph of a faint galaxy found 30 million light-years away.
This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, focuses on an object named UGC 695 – known as a low-surface-brightness (LSB) galaxy.
The galaxy is located 30 million light-years away within the Cetus constellation, also known as the Whale.
An LSB galaxy is so faint their brightness is less than the background brightness of Earth’s atmosphere, making them difficult to observe.
This low brightness is a consequence of the relatively small number of stars within them.
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A NASA statement said: “Most of the normal, or “baryonic,” matter in these galaxies exists in the form of huge clouds of gas and dust.
“The stars are also distributed over a relatively large area.
“LSB galaxies, like dwarf galaxies, have a high fraction of dark matter relative to the number of stars they contain.
“Astronomers still debate about how LSB galaxies formed in the first place.”
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The intriguing image comes hot on the heels of another of another incredible picture of a dying Sun-like star.
Hubble photographed the evidence of this happening to a Sun-like star 10,000 light-years away from Earth.
The picture shows the distant planetary nebula NGC 5307 in the constellation Centaurus the Centaur.
The nebula was formed when its host star ran of fuel, expanded into a red giant and died.
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A star’s bright glow and heat are produced by the intense process of nuclear fusion at the heart of the star.
The stars act like giant nuclear reactors by binding smaller atoms into larger elements.
Nuclear fusion releases energy vast enough to tear the star apart.
According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the only thing holding destruction at bay is the star’s mass and gravity.
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