The stately sweeping spiral arms of the spiral galaxy NGC 5495 are revealed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3
in this image. NGC 5495, which lies around 300 million light-years from
Earth in the constellation Hydra, is a Seyfert galaxy, a type of galaxy
with a particularly bright central region. These luminous cores — known
to astronomers as active galactic nuclei — are dominated by the light emitted by dust and gas falling into a supermassive black hole.
This image is drawn from a series of observations captured by
astronomers studying supermassive black holes lurking in the hearts of
other galaxies. Studying the central regions of galaxies can be
challenging: as well as the light created by matter falling into
supermassive black holes, areas of star formation and the light from
existing stars all contribute to the brightness of galactic cores.
Hubble’s crystal-clear vision helped astronomers disentangle the various
sources of light at the core of NGC 5495, allowing them to precisely
weigh its supermassive black hole.
As well as NGC 5495, two stellar interlopers are visible in this
image. One is just outside the centre of NGC 5495, and the other is very
prominent alongside the galaxy. While they share the same location on
the sky, these objects are much closer to home than NGC 5495: they are stars from our own Milky Way. The bright stars are surrounded by criss-cross diffraction spikes, optical artefacts created by the internal structure of Hubble interacting with starlight.
Source: ESA/Hubble/potw
