Hubble captures the broad spiral arms of the galaxy NGC 5495
Researchers from NASA and ESA presented a new image of the Hubble Space Telescope. This time it captured the wide arms of the spiral galaxy NGC 5495, located about 300 million light-years from Earth. NGC 5495 belongs to the class of Seyfert galaxies with a bright, active nucleus, which astronomers assume contains a black hole.
The image comes from observations made on Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WF3) instrument as part of the program to study black holes in the centers of galaxies. The telescope’s capabilities helped astronomers make out multiple light sources in the nucleus of NGC 5495, which allowed them to accurately determine the mass of the galaxy’s supermassive black hole.
In addition to NGC 5495, the image shows two very bright stars. One is located near the center of the galaxy, the other is an incredibly bright object on the right side of the galaxy. These stars are significantly closer to Earth than NGC 5495 – they are located directly in the Milky Way.
On September 19, the Hubble team published a photo of a bright young star surrounded by a thick veil of dust and gas. The object, dubbed IRAS 05506+2414, is about 9,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Taurus. Researchers suggested that it appeared as a result of the explosion of a young massive stellar system.
