Milky Way stars photobomb a spiral galaxy in a stunning Hubble photo

Hubble captured the sight of a beautiful spiral galaxy adorned with the sparkle of two nearby stars. NGC 5495 lies 300 million light years from Earth, far behind the jewel-like celestial bodies to the top-left of the galaxy’s centre, and another to the right. These are stars within the Milky Way, Earth’s home galaxy, which like NGC 5495 is a spiral galaxy. According to the ESA, which wrote a description of the “stately sweeping spiral arms” of the galaxy in a new NGC 5495 image, 60 per cent of galaxies are spiral galaxies. This means that most of the stars in the universe are contained within a galaxy like our own, or like the one seen in the new Hubble image. NGC 5495 is a Seyfert galaxy. These are galaxies with activity at their cores. The most extreme version of active galactic nuclei (AGN), called quasars, are the brightest objects in the known universe. This sort of glowing galactic heart is powered by the might of a supermassive black hole, which astronomers believe lie at the centres of most, if not all, galaxies in the cosmos.

When these gravity pits accrete a lot of material around the outside, the material heats up and begins to glow. NGC 5495 isn’t in the quasar category, but it’s still considered a churning AGN. NGC 5495 is also lovely to behold because it’s conveniently oriented face-on to observers on Earth, allowing its core and spiral arms to be clearly visible. Although it’s not too visible from this perspective, spiral galaxy NGC 5495 is probably enveloped in a halo that lies just above and below the galactic disc.