Hubble captures bright galactic-stellar duo

April 19 () –

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 3783, a bright barred spiral galaxy about 130 million light years away which also lends its name to its group of galaxies.

Like galaxy clusters, galaxy groups are aggregates of gravitationally bound galaxies. However, galaxy groups are less massive and contain fewer members than galaxy clusters: while galaxy clusters can contain hundreds or even thousands of constituted galaxies, galaxy groups usually include no more than 50.

The Milky Way is actually part of a group of galaxies. , known as the Local Group, which also hosts two other large galaxies (Andromeda and the Triangle galaxy), as well as several dozen satellite and dwarf galaxies. The galaxy group NGC 3783 contains 47 galaxies. It also appears to be at a fairly early stage of its evolution, which makes it an interesting object to study.

While the focus of this image is the spiral galaxy NGC 3783, Attention is equally focused on the very bright object at the bottom right of this image. This is the star HD 101274. The perspective of this image makes the star and galaxy look like close companions, But this is an illusion. HD 101274 is located just 1,530 light years from Earth, about 85,000 times closer than NGC 3783. This explains how a single star can appear to eclipse an entire galaxy, NASA reports.

NGC 3783 is a Seyfert type 1 galaxy, which is a galaxy with a bright central region. Hubble captures it in incredible detail, from its bright central bar to its narrow, sinuous arms and the dust passing through them, thanks to five separate images taken at different wavelengths of light. In fact, the galactic center is so bright that it exhibits diffraction peaks, normally only seen in stars like HD 101274.