Feeding Time: This remarkable spiral galaxy, known as NGC 4651, may look serene and peaceful as it swirls in the vast, silent emptiness of space, but don’t be fooled — it keeps a violent secret. It is believed that this galaxy consumed another smaller galaxy to become the large and beautiful spiral that we observe today. Although only a telescope like the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which captured this image, could give us a picture this clear, NGC 4651 can also be observed with an amateur telescope — so if you have a telescope at home and a star-gazing eye, look out for this glittering carnivorous spiral.

Name: NGC 4651
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Coma Berenices
Release date: 30 March 2020, 06:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Leonard

Rings Upon Rings: At first glance, the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image looks to be a simple spiral galaxy, with two pinwheeling arms emerging from a central bar of stars and material that cuts through the galactic centre. In fact, there are rings within these spiral arms, too: spirals within a spiral. This kind of morphology is known as a multiring structure. As this description suggests, this galaxy, named NGC 2273, hosts an inner ring and two outer “pseudorings” — having so many distinct rings is rare, and makes NGC 2273 unusual. Rings are created when a galaxy’s spiral arms appear to loop around to nearly close upon one another, combined with a trick of cosmic perspective. NGC 2273’s two pseudorings are formed by two swirling sets of spiral arms coming together, and the inner ring by two arcing structures nearer to the galactic centre, which seem to connect in a similar way. These rings are not the only unique feature of this galaxy. NGC 2273 is also a Seyfert galaxy, a galaxy with an extremely luminous core. In fact, the centre of a galaxy such as this is powered by a supermassive black hole, and can glow brightly enough to outshine an entire galaxy like the Milky Way.

Name: NGC 2273
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Lynx
Release date: 6 April 2020, 06:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Greene

Hunting for Dead Stars: This image depicts a swirling spiral galaxy named NGC 2906. The blue speckles seen scattered across this galaxy are massive  young stars, which emit hot, blue-tinged radiation as they burn through their fuel at an immense rate. The swathes of orange are a mix of older stars that have swollen and cooled, and low-mass stars that were never especially hot to begin with. Owing to their lower temperatures, these stars emit a cooler, reddish, radiation. This image of NGC 2906 was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3, an instrument installed on Hubble in 2009 during the telescope’s fourth servicing mission. Hubble observed this galaxy on the hunt for fading light from recent, nearby occurrences of objects known as supernovae.

Name: NGC 2906
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Leo
Release date: 13 April 2020, 06:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A Filippenko

Stealing the Show: As beautiful as the surrounding space may be, the sparkling galaxy in the foreground of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope undeniably steals the show. This spotlight-hogging galaxy, seen set against a backdrop of more distant galaxies of all shapes and sizes, is known as PGC 29388. Although it dominates in this image, this galaxy is a small player on the cosmic stage, and is known as a dwarf elliptical galaxy. As the “dwarf” moniker suggests, the galaxy is on the smaller side, and boasts a “mere” 100 million to a few billion stars — a very small number indeed when compared to the Milky Way's population of around 250 to 400 billion stellar residents.

Name: PGC 29388
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : EllipticalLocal Universe : Galaxy : Size : Dwarf
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Ursa Major
Release date: 20 April 2020, 09:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Armandroff

A Stretched Spiral: This sparkling spiral galaxy looks almost stretched across the sky in this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Known as NGC 4100, the galaxy boasts a neat spiral structure and swirling arms speckled with the bright blue hue of newly formed stars. Like so many of the stunning images of galaxies we enjoy today, this image was captured by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). This remarkable instrument was installed in 2002, and, with some servicing over the years by intrepid astronauts, is still going strong. You can access many of the stunning images captured by the ACS here, featuring objects from out-of-this-world spiral galaxies to dark, imposing nebulae, bizarre cosmic phenomena, and sparkling clusters made up of thousands upon thousands of stars.

Name: NGC 4100
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Ursa Major
Release date: 27 April 2020, 06:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Ho

Galaxy Galaxy, Burning Bright!: In the forests of the night lies a barred spiral galaxy called NGC 3583, imaged here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This is a barred spiral galaxy with two arms that twist out into the Universe. This galaxy is located 98 million light-years away from the Milky Way. Two supernovae exploded in this galaxy, one in 1975 and another, more recently, in 2015. There are a few different ways that supernova can form. In the case of these two supernovae, the explosions evolved from two independent binary star systems in which the stellar remnant of a Sun-like star, known as a white dwarf, was collecting material from its companion star. Feeding off of its partner, the white dwarf gorged on the material until it reached a maximum mass. At this point, the star collapsed inward before exploding outward in a brilliant supernova. Two of these events were spotted in NGC 3583, and though not visible in this picture of the week, we can still marvel at the galaxy’s fearful symmetry.

Name: NGC 3583
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : SpiralLocal Universe : Galaxy : Type : Barred
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Ursa Major
Distance: 100 million light years
Release date: 4 May 2020, 06:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.

Two Supernovae, One Galaxy: Approximately 85 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Libra, is the beautiful galaxy NGC 5861,  captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 5861 is an intermediate spiral galaxy. Astronomers classify most galaxies by their morphology. For example, the Milky Way galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy. An intermediate spiral galaxy has a shape lying in between that of a barred spiral galaxy, one that appears to have a central bar-shaped structure, and that of an unbarred spiral galaxy, one without a central bar. Two supernovae, SN1971D and SN2017erp, have been observed in the galaxy. Supernovae are powerful and luminous explosions that can light up the night sky. The brightest supernova ever recorded was possibly SN 1006. It shone 16 times as bright as Venus from April 30 to May 1, 1006 AD.

Name: NGC 5861
Type: Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Category: Galaxies
Constellation: Libra
Release date: 11 May 2020, 06:00
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.