Hubble captures an edge-on galaxy with an attractive silhouette

Dec. 13 () –

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a spiral galaxy, called UGC 10043, side view with an attractive silhouette.

Located approximately 150 million light years from Earth in the Serpens constellation, UGC 10043 is one of the somewhat rare spiral galaxies that are seen edge-on from the point of view of an observer on Earth, NASA reports.

This edge-on view makes the galaxy’s disk appear like a sharp line through space, with its prominent dust lanes forming thick cloud bands that obscure our view of the galaxy’s brightness. If we could fly over the galaxy, looking at it from top to bottom, we would see this dust scattered across UGC 10043, possibly outlining its spiral arms.

Despite the obscuring nature of dust, some active star-forming regions shine behind the dark clouds. We can also see that the center of the galaxy sports a bright, almost egg-shaped “bulge” rising well above and below the disk. All spiral galaxies have a bulge similar to this as part of their structure.

These bulges contain stars that orbit the galactic center in paths above and below the rotating disk; It is a feature that is not normally obvious in galaxy images.

The unusually large size of this bulge compared to the galaxy’s disk is possibly due to UGC 10043 absorbing material from a nearby dwarf galaxy. This may also be the reason why your disk appears warped, bending up at one end and down at the other.

Like most full-color Hubble images, this image is a composite, made up of several individual snapshots taken by Hubble at different times, each capturing different wavelengths of light. One notable aspect of this image is that the two data sets that make up this image were collected 23 years apart, in 2000 and 2023.