Hubble Space Telescope Snaps Detailed Images of New Galaxies
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was able to capture sharp images of an edge-on disk galaxy surrounded by clusters of newly formed stars located billions of years away from the planet Earth. The galaxy is said to be one of several studied by Hubble, on top of those previously discovered by the Sloan Giant Arcs Survey.
The edge-on disk galaxy was made even sharper by NASA through a new analysis that involves the use of a gravitational lens. Describing the image of the galaxy captured by Hubble, Jane Rigby of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said: "When we saw the reconstructed image we said, 'Wow, it looks like fireworks are going off everywhere.'"
Michael Gladders, an associate professor from the University of Chicago, also said, "Mining the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has given us the opportunity to peer inside a distant star-forming galaxy with a sharpness of vision never before allowed." He said the original image gave "a highly distorted view" of the galaxy, but with some work done, they were able to reconstruct the image and make it as detailed as possible.
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Aside from the aforementioned galaxy, another one was also captured by Hubble, which was codenamed IC 342. The said galaxy was closer to Earth at 13 million light years away.
Although its close proximity to Earth should make it much easier for the iconic telescope to take a better picture of this galaxy, its position in space ironically makes it much harder for Hubble to capture it. This was why it was recently given the nickname, "Hidden Galaxy."
According to a press statement released by the European Space Agency, the hidden galaxy is obscured by glowing cosmic gas, bright stars and dark dust but is very active. The image captured by Hubble shows that the gas, dust and stars create a spiral shape around the center of the hidden galaxy.
