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What it is : The spiral coltsfoot UGC 5460
Where it is : 60 million light - year off in the constellation Ursa Major
The spiral galaxy UGC 5460 has hosted two recent supernovae.
When it was shared : Feb. 21 , 2025
Why it ’s so limited : This stunning unexampled picture of a spiral coltsfoot — and a very bright whizz above it — was lately enamor by theHubble Space Telescope . The mental image show the galaxy ’s key bar of stars , along with its whorled arms and young , blue-blooded star clump . The top - left of the paradigm , meanwhile , is eclipse by a maven that ’s just 577 light - years away in theMilky Way .
This Galax urceolata has hosted two significant supernova explosions in the last 14 years . Such events are watershed for uranologist and are the final , destructive stage for some monumental stars . A supernova plosion can in short have the power of up to 100 billion stars and temporarily outshine their host galaxies .
An uncropped image of UGC 5460.
Supernovae play a full of life role in spreading heavy element around interstellar place , which in turn sparks the formation of unexampled lead .
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These stellar plosion may be inevitable for some classes of genius , but they can dally out in wildly different ways — which scientists mistrust is the eccentric for the two recent supernovas that erupted in this picturesque spiral extragalactic nebula .
For instance , in 2015 , astronomer watched the star SN 2015 explode as a " core - crash " supernova , when the massive wizard consumed its nuclear fuel and collapsed under gravity , causing its out level to be ejected into UGC 5460 . This explosion led astronomers to take the new image of the Galax urceolata , as they wanted to find out how a supernova ’s jolt waveinteracts with the interstellar gassurrounding it .
An earlier supernova explosion in 2011 , meanwhile , call SN 2011ht , ab initio come along to be a core collapse . However , astronomers suspect that it may be a so - called " luminous blasphemous variable " — a uncommon kind of massive star that outbursts like a supernova but lead the superstar intact . Hubble is now looking for the go asterisk at the burst land site .
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This elaborated figure of speech of UGC 5460 from Hubble ’s Wide Field Camera combines information from the ultraviolet , near - infrared and seeable light parts of the spectrum .
The galaxy is found close to the stars Merak and Dubhe on the outside of the bowl , in the contour of the Big Dipper / Plough asterism in the night sky , though it is too black to see with anything other than tumid professional astronomy telescopes .
For more sublime space picture , check out ourSpace Photo of the Week archives .
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