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Asteroid Passes in Front of UGC 12158 (Compass Image)

Annotated image of barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158 against the black background of space, with compass arrows, a scale bar, and color key for reference. The galaxy has a pinwheel shape made up of bright blue stars wound around a yellow-white hub of central stars. The hub has a slash of stars across it, called a bar. The galaxy is tilted face-on to our view from Earth. A slightly s-shaped white line across the top is a Hubble image is of an asteroid streaking across Hubble's view. It looks dashed because the image is a combination of several exposures of the asteroid flying by like a race car. White text at top left reads "UGC 12158." White text below reads "HST ACS/WFC." Near top left, color key consisting of three lines reads: "F475" in blue, "F606" in green, and "F814W" in red. At bottom left corner is a scale bar labeled "60,000 light-years" over "30 arcseconds." At bottom right corner, the "E" compass arrow points towards the 2 o'clock position. The "N" compass arrow points towards the 5 o'clock position.

This Hubble Space Telescope image of the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158 looks like someone took a white marking pen to it. In reality it is a combination of time exposures of a foreground asteroid moving through Hubble's field-of-view, photobombing the observation of the galaxy. Several exposures of the galaxy were taken, what is evidence in the dashed pattern.

The asteroid appears as a curved trail due to parallax: Hubble is not stationary, but orbiting Earth, and this gives the illusion that the faint asteroid is swimming along a curved trajectory. The uncharted asteroid is inside the asteroid belt in our solar system, and hence is 10 trillion times closer to Hubble than the background galaxy.

Rather than a nuisance, this type of data are useful to astronomers for doing a census of the asteroid population in our solar system.

About the Object

  • R.A. Position
    R.A. PositionRight ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position.
    22:42:10.496
  • Dec. Position
    Dec. PositionDeclination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position.
    19:59:49.21
  • Constellation
    ConstellationOne of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears.
    Pegasus
  • Distance
    DistanceThe physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs.
    400 million light-years
  • Dimensions
    DimensionsThe physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky.
    Image is about 2.2 arcmin across (about 256,000 light-years)

About the Data

  • Data Description
    Data DescriptionProposal: A description of the observations, their scientific justification, and the links to the data available in the science archive.
    Science Team: The astronomers who planned the observations and analyzed the data. "PI" refers to the Principal Investigator.

    The HST observations include those from program 10182 (A. Filippenko). Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

  • Instrument
    InstrumentThe science instrument used to produce the data.
    ACS/WFC
  • Exposure Dates
    Exposure DatesThe date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time.
    September 15, 2004
  • Filters
    FiltersThe camera filters that were used in the science observations.
    F475W, F606W, F814W
  • Object Name
    Object NameA name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object.
    UGC 12158
  • Object Description
    Object DescriptionThe type of astronomical object.
    Sprial galaxy with asteroid passing through field of view
  • Release Date
    April 18, 2024
  • Science Release
    Hubble Goes Hunting for Small Main Belt Asteroids
    Read the release
  • Credits
    NASA, ESA, Pablo García Martín (UAM)

Downloads

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  • 2000 × 1429
    jpg (1.21 MB)
Annotated image of barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158 against the black background of space, with compass arrows, a scale bar, and color key for reference. The galaxy has a pinwheel shape made up of bright blue stars wound around a yellow-white hub of central stars. The hub has a slash of stars across it, called a bar. The galaxy is tilted face-on to our view from Earth. A slightly s-shaped white line across the top is a Hubble image is of an asteroid streaking across Hubble's view. It looks dashed because the image is a combination of several exposures of the asteroid flying by like a race car. White text at top left reads "UGC 12158." White text below reads "HST ACS/WFC." Near top left, color key consisting of three lines reads: "F475" in blue, "F606" in green, and "F814W" in red. At bottom left corner is a scale bar labeled "60,000 light-years" over "30 arcseconds." At bottom right corner, the "E" compass arrow points towards the 2 o'clock position. The "N" compass arrow points towards the 5 o'clock position.
Color Info
Color InfoA brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented.

These images are a composite of separate exposures acquired by the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Several filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F475W, Green: F606W, Red: F814W

Related Images & Videos

This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158. The majestic galaxy has a pinwheel shape made up of bright blue stars wound around a yellow-white hub of central stars. The hub has a slash of stars across it, called a bar. The galaxy is tilted face-on to our view from Earth. A slightly s-shaped white line across the top is a Hubble image is of an asteroid streaking across Hubble's view. It looks dashed because the image is a combination of several exposures of the asteroid flying by like a race car.

Wayward Asteroid Photobombs Hubble Snapshot of Galaxy UGC 12158

This Hubble Space Telescope image of the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158 looks like someone took a white marking pen to it. In reality it is a combination of time exposures of a foreground asteroid moving through Hubble's field-of-view, photobombing the observation of the galaxy....

This graph plots the size of asteroids versus their abundance, based on a Hubble Space Telescope archival survey that found 1,701 mostly previously undetected asteroids lying between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The vertical axis lists number of objects from zero to 70. The horizontal axis lists size, from zero kilometers on the left, to 2 kilometers on the right. The graph slopes up such that the most abundant asteroids detected by Hubble in the survey are 0.5 kilometers across in size.

Size Distribution for Unknown Asteroids in Hubble Asteroid Hunter Survey

This graph is based on Hubble Space Telescope archival data that was used to identify a largely unseen population of very small asteroids in their tracks. The asteroids were not the intended targets, but instead photobombed background stars and galaxies in Hubble images. The...

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Details

Last Updated
Mar 10, 2025
Contact
Media

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Image Processing Credit

Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Acknowledgment Credit

Alex Filippenko (UC Berkeley)

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