Hubble observes a light show in the galaxy NGC 1672

Nov. 8 () –

This image captured by Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 1672, a barred spiral galaxy located 49 million light years from Earth in the constellation Dorado.

This galaxy is a multi-talented light show, displaying an impressive array of different celestial lights, NASA explains in a statement. Like any spiral galaxy, its disk is filled with billions of bright stars that give it a beautiful glow.

Along its two large arms, bubbles of hydrogen gas shine with a striking red light thanks to the powerful radiation from the newly formed stars inside. Near the center are some particularly spectacular stars; newly formed and extremely hot, They are embedded in a ring of hot gas and emit powerful X-rays.

And at the very center lies an even brighter source of X-rays, an active galactic nucleus created by the heated accretion disk around the supermassive black hole of NGC 1672; this makes NGC 1672 a Seyfert galaxy.

But the highlight of this image is the most fleeting and temporary of these lights: supernova SN 2017GAX, visible in just one of the six Hubble images that make up this composite image. It was a type I supernova caused by the collapse of the core and subsequent explosion of a giant star, that went from invisibility to a new light in the sky in a matter of days.

In that image from later that year, the supernova is already fading, so it’s only visible here as a small green dot, just below the curve of the spiral arm on the right side.