New Hubble image spotlights giant elliptical galaxy 486 million light-years away

NASA on Friday shared a breathtaking image of a giant elliptical galaxy, dubbed UGC 10143, to wrap up the first week of Galaxies Galore. The galaxy is located bout 486 million light-years away in the head of the serpent, the constellation Serpens, and is the brightest galaxy in a cluster full of them.

The new Hubble image spotlights UGC 10143 at the heart of the galaxy cluster Abell 2147, which itself may be part of the much larger Hercules Supercluster of galaxies. The image uses data from the telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys and is part of a Hubble survey of globular star clusters associated with the brightest galaxies in galaxy clusters.

The survey explored the distribution, brightness, and metal content of more than 35,000 globular star clusters, NASA said.

What better way to wrap up the first week of #GalaxiesGalore than with a new Hubble image? Soak in this view of the giant elliptical galaxy UGC 10143, the brightest galaxy in a cluster full of them.Explore more: https://t.co/vyYqvXqdrx pic.twitter.com/ZxRKzvG7lT

— Hubble (@NASAHubble) May 13, 2022

Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The observatory was launched and deployed by the space shuttle Discovery in 1990 and it has made more than 1.5 million scientific observations in its 31+ years of operation.

The Advanced Camera for Surveys was installed on Hubble during Servicing Mission 3B in 2002 and it has detectors that are sensitive to visible and ultraviolet light. With its superb image quality and high sensitivity, ACS has increased the telescope's potential for new discoveries by a factor of ten. More information about the instrument can be found here. 

NASA will be sharing more never-before-seen Hubble galaxy images and exploring the science behind these cosmic neighbourhoods for the next few weeks.