Hubble image shows edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 1827 as part of satellite galaxy survey

NASA released a new Hubble Space Telescope image on 16 October showing NGC 1827, an intermediate spiral galaxy viewed edge-on. According to NASA, the galaxy sits roughly 37 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Columba, the Dove. Seen from the side, its rusty-brown dust lanes cut across the disk along its full length.

The image was taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. NASA says it shows bright-blue regions along the disk, broken up by dark dust lanes, in which new stars are probably forming. Just left of the galaxy's central bulge sits a bright star, but it is a foreground object positioned between Earth and NGC 1827. Its four diffraction spikes come from light bending around the struts inside the telescope that support Hubble's secondary mirror. Other foreground stars in the frame can be recognized by the same spikes, while more distant galaxies dot the dark background.

The observation is part of a Hubble survey examining 260 satellite galaxies around 22 host galaxies similar to the Milky Way, all lying within roughly 32 million light-years of Earth. So far Hubble has observed 111 of these satellites. According to NASA, the remaining targets will require an additional 149 Hubble orbits, with one orbit allocated per galaxy.

NASA says low-mass galaxies like those in this observing program offer a way to test what cosmological models predict on small scales, where those models struggle to match observations. The agency expects the data to give researchers a better handle on the properties of low-mass galaxies around Milky Way-like hosts and, in turn, to refine cosmological models. The image is credited to NASA, ESA and Michael Jones of the California Institute of Technology, with image processing by Gladys Kober of NASA and the Catholic University of America.