2 min read

Hubble’s Lonely Firework Display

A bright, ragged spiral galaxy
ESA/Hubble & NASA

Roughly 50 million light-years away lies a somewhat overlooked little galaxy named NGC 1559. Pictured here by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, this barred spiral lies in the little-observed southern constellation of Reticulum (the Reticule).

NGC 1559 has massive spiral arms chock-full of star formation, and is receding from us at a speed of about 808 miles per second (1,300 kilometers per second). The galaxy contains the mass of around ten billion suns — while this may sound like a lot, it is over 20 times less massive than the Milky Way. Although NGC 1559 appears in the sky near one of our closest galaxy neighbors, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), this is just a trick of perspective. In reality, NGC 1559 is physically nowhere near the LMC in space — in fact, it truly is a loner, lacking the company of any nearby galaxies or membership of any galaxy cluster.

Despite its lack of cosmic companions, when this lonely galaxy has a telescope pointed in its direction, it puts on quite a show. NGC 1559 has hosted a variety of spectacular exploding stars called supernovae, four of which we have observed — in 1984, 1986, 2005, and 2009.

NGC 1559 may be alone in space, but we are watching and admiring from far away.


Text Credit: European Space Agency

Share

Details

Last Updated
Oct 04, 2023
Editor
NASA Hubble Mission Team
Contact
NASA Hubble Mission Team

Related Terms

Explore More

4 min read

NASA Successfully Integrates Roman Mission’s Telescope, Instruments

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has successfully integrated the mission’s telescope and two instruments onto the instrument carrier, marking the completion of the Roman payload. Now the team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will begin joining the payload to the spacecraft. “We’re in the middle of an exciting stage […]

Article5 hours ago
Light and dark blue splotches cover Earth as a yellow band streaks across the Pacific Ocean between Central America and Indonesia.
4 min read

NASA Study: Crops, Forests Responding to Changing Rainfall Patterns

Earth’s rainy days are changing: They’re becoming less frequent, but more intense. Vegetation is responding.

Article1 day ago
Hundreds of overlapping objects at various distances are spread across this field. Galaxies’ colors vary. The majority appear orange, pink, and white, some are shades of orange or blue. Most galaxies appear as fuzzy ovals, but a few have distinctive spiral arms. At the very center is a tiny galaxy nicknamed Firefly Sparkle that looks like a long, angled, dotted line. Smaller companions are nearby.
6 min read

Found: First Actively Forming Galaxy as Lightweight as Young Milky Way

Article1 day ago
Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

James Webb Space Telescope

The image is divided horizontally by an undulating line between a cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively clear upper portion. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing innumerable stars of many sizes. The smallest of these are small, distant, and faint points of light. The largest of these appear larger, closer, brighter, and more fully resolved with 8-point diffraction spikes. The upper portion of the image is blueish, and has wispy translucent cloud-like streaks rising from the nebula below. The orangish cloudy formation in the bottom half varies in density and ranges from translucent to opaque. The stars vary in color, the majority of which have a blue or orange hue. The cloud-like structure of the nebula contains ridges, peaks, and valleys – an appearance very similar to a mountain range. Three long diffraction spikes from the top right edge of the image suggest the presence of a large star just out of view.

Perseverance Rover

Parker Solar Probe

Juno