Discovered by William Herschel in 1783, NGC 3274 is a magnitude +12.8 galaxy located over 20 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo bordering on Leo Minor. The galaxy PGC 213714 is also visible on the upper right of the frame, located some 1.3 billion light-years from Earth. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Calzetti.This image of the spiral galaxy NGC 3274 comes courtesy of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Hubble’s WFC3 vision spreads from the ultraviolet light through to the near infrared, allowing astronomers to study a wide range of targets, from nearby star formation through to galaxies in the most remote regions of the cosmos.
This particular image combines observations gathered in five different filters, bringing together ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light to show off NGC 3274 in all its glory. As with all of the data Hubble sends back to Earth, it takes advantage of the telescope’s location in space above our planet’s distorting atmosphere. WFC3 returns clear, crisp, and detailed images time after time.
NGC 3274 is a relatively faint galaxy located over 20 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). The galaxy was discovered by William Herschel in 1783. The galaxy PGC 213714 is also visible on the upper right of the frame, located much further away from Earth.
University of Texas astronomer Natalie Gosnell has used the Hubble Space Telescope to better understand why some stars aren’t evolving as predicted. These so-called “blue stragglers” look hotter and bluer than they should for their advanced age. It’s almost as it they were somehow reinvigorated to look much younger than they really are.
Super-luminous supernovae (SLSNe) are a relatively new and rare class of stellar explosions, 10 to 100 times brighter than normal supernovae. According to a new model, researchers have found that highly magnetised, rapidly spinning neutron stars called magnetars could explain the energy source behind SLSNe.
This image, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the globular cluster Terzan 1. Lying around 20,000 light-years from us in the constellation of Scorpius, it is one of about 150 globular clusters belonging to our galaxy, the Milky Way.
