NGC 6503: a lone galaxy lost in space

The Space Telescope Science Institute Press Release

14 June 2015 Astronomy Now

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows NGC 6503. The galaxy, which lies about 18 million light-years away, is at the edge of a strangely empty patch of space called the Local Void. This new image shows a very rich set of colours, adding to the detail seen in previous images. Image credit: NASA, ESA.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows NGC 6503. The galaxy, which lies about 18 million light-years away, is at the edge of a strangely empty patch of space called the Local Void. This new image shows a very rich set of colours, adding to the detail seen in previous images. Image credit: NASA, ESA.
The Local Void is a huge stretch of space that is at least 150 million light-years across. It seems completely empty of stars or galaxies. This galaxy’s odd location on the edge of this never-land led astronomer Stephen James O’Meara to dub it the “Lost-In-Space galaxy” in his 2007 book, Hidden Treasures.

NGC 6503 is 18 million light-years away from us in the northern circumpolar constellation of Draco. NGC 6503 spans some 30,000 light-years, about a third of the size of the Milky Way.

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows NGC 6503 in striking detail and with a rich set of colours. Bright red patches of gas can be seen scattered through its swirling spiral arms, mixed with bright blue regions that contain newly forming stars. Dark brown dust lanes snake across the galaxy’s bright arms and center, giving it a mottled appearance.

The Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys data for NGC 6503 were taken in April 2003, and the Wide Field Camera 3 data were taken in August 2013.

Related Articles

News

Virgo Cluster galaxy’s stunning gas tail

22 February 2016 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have discovered a spectacular tail of gas more than 300,000 light-years across coming from a galaxy known as NGC 4569, 55 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster. The plume is made up of hydrogen gas — the material new stars are made of — and is five times longer than the galaxy itself.

Picture This

The Milky Way’s clean and tidy galactic neighbour

27 January 2016 Astronomy Now

Many galaxies are chock-full of dust, while others have occasional dark streaks of opaque cosmic soot swirling in amongst their gas and stars. However, the irregular dwarf galaxy IC 1613 contains very little cosmic dust, allowing astronomers to explore its contents with great clarity. This is not just a matter of appearances; the galaxy’s cleanliness is vital to our understanding of the universe around us.

News

Ultra-sharp image uncovers the shocking lives of young stars

17 June 2016 Astronomy Now

An unprecedented view from the world’s most advanced adaptive optics system on the Gemini South telescope in Chile probes a swarm of young and forming stars that appear to have been triggered, or shocked, into existence. The group, known as N159W, is located some 158,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite to our Milky Way Galaxy.