Pan of Spiral Galaxy UGC 10043 in Serpens | Hubble Space Telescope

Pan of Spiral Galaxy UGC 10043 in Serpens | Hubble Space Telescope

What kind of astronomical object is this? It does not look quite like the kinds of galaxies, nebulae, star clusters or galaxy clusters that Hubble normally brings us images of. In fact, this is a spiral galaxy, named UGC 10043—we just happen to be seeing it directly from the side. Located roughly 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, UGC 10043 is one of the rare spiral galaxies that are seen edge-on from our perspective.

From this point of view, we see the galaxy’s disc as a sharp line through space, overlain with a prominent dust lane. This dust is spread across the spiral arms of UGC 10043, but it looks very thick and cloudy when viewed from the side. You can even see the lights of active star-forming regions in the arms, shining out from behind the dust. Strikingly, we can also see that the center of the galaxy sports a glowing, almost egg-shaped ‘bulge’, rising far above and below the disc. 

All spiral galaxies have a bulge like this one as part of their structure, containing stars that orbit the galactic center on paths above and below the whirling disc; it is a feature that is not normally obvious in pictures of galaxies. The unusually large size of this bulge compared to the galaxy’s disc is possibly thanks to UGC 10043 siphoning material from a nearby dwarf galaxy. This may also be why the disc is warped, bending up at one end and down at the other.

Like most full-color Hubble images, this is a composite, made up of several individual snapshots capturing unique light wavelengths. 

Image Description: A spiral galaxy seen directly from the side, such that its disc looks like a narrow diagonal band across the image. A band of dark dust covers the disc in the center most of the way out to the ends, and the disc glows around that. In the center a whitish circle of light bulges out above and below the disc. The tips of the disc are a bit bent. The background is black and mostly empty.

Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, R. Windhorst, W. Keel

Duration: 30 seconds
Release Date: Nov. 18, 2024

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