Hubble captures new image of a calm galaxy in constellation Aries

A new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the spectacular galaxy NGC 976 that lies around 150 million light-years from the Milky Way galaxy in the constellation Aries. Created using data from Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), the image shows the lazily winding spiral arms of the spectacular galaxy.

Despite its tranquil appearance, NGC 976 has played host to a supernova explosion, one of the most violent astronomical events that take place during the final stages of the death of a supermassive star. The super-powerful explosion can outshine entire galaxies for a short period.

The picture comes from a large collection of Hubble observations of nearby galaxies which host supernovae as well Cepheids, a special type of variable star with very stable and predictable brightness variations.

Both Cepheids and supernovae are used to measure astronomical distances, and galaxies containing both objects provide useful natural laboratories where the two methods can be calibrated against one another, according to a post on the official ESA website for the Hubble telescope.

Our latest Picture of the Week inspires a galactic tranquility. The lazily winding spiral arms of the spectacular galaxy NGC 976 fill the frame of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.🔗 https://t.co/vRgbgpWjRb pic.twitter.com/JNXybCnZTM

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) January 10, 2022

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between the European Space Agency (ESA) and U.S. space agency NASA. The space-based observatory has made over 1.5 million observations and more than 19,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published on its discoveries.

Hubble was launched and deployed by the space shuttle Discovery in 1990 and it recently completed one billion seconds of operations in space. The telescope was named after American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble, one of the great pioneers of modern astronomy.