Jan. 20 () –
An image packed with large cosmic objects taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, dominated by the vague shape of the small galaxy UGC 7983, it also hides an astronomical interloper.
A smaller asteroid, a few kilometers in diameter, can be seen in the upper left of the image. The asteroid’s trail is visible as four streaks of light separated by small gaps. These streaks of light represent the four separate exposures that were combined to create this image, with the small gaps between each observation being necessary to change the filters inside Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
The capture of an asteroid was a fortunate side effect of a larger effort to observe all known galaxies near the Milky Way, ESA reports.
UGC 7983 is located about 30 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Virgo, and is a dwarf irregular galaxy, a type thought to be similar to the earliest galaxies in the Universe.
