Hubble spots bright galactic and stellar duo 130 million light-years from Earth

A bright galaxy and an extremely bright star with long diffraction spikes around it take center stage in this latest image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. 

NGC 3783 is a barred spiral galaxy located about 130 million light-years from Earth. It is classified as a type-1 Seyfert galaxy, which is a galaxy with a bright central region.

The bright star in the lower right part of this image is HD 101274, which appears to outshine the entire galaxy. The star and the galaxy look like close companions, but this is an illusion as HD 101274 lies only about 1,530 light-years from Earth, it is about 85,000 times closer than NGC 3783 is to our planet.

Meet the barred spiral galaxy NGC 3783! 👋🌌 In this image, it appears beside a blazing star – but the two are anything but close. pic.twitter.com/ODxIlgCfgd

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) April 18, 2024

The galaxy in question lends its name to the eponymous NGC 3783 galaxy group - a collection of gravitationally bound galaxies. Galaxy groups are less massive and contain fewer members than galaxy clusters do: where galaxy clusters can contain hundreds or even thousands of constituent galaxies, galaxy groups do not typically include more than 50.

The NGC 3783 galaxy group contains 47 galaxies and it seems to be at a fairly early stage of its evolution, making it an interesting target for astronomers.