Hubble shows us a majestic spiral galaxy 230 million light years from us

This astronomical portrait from NASA / ESA's Hubble Space Telescope shows a panoramic view of the majestic spiral galaxy UGC 11537. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 captured the tightly wrapped spiral arms swirling around the heart of UGC 11537 at lengths of infrared and visible wave, showing both the bright bands of the stars and the dark clouds of dust that drift across the galaxy.

UGC 11537 is located 230 million light-years away in the constellation Aquila, and is located near the plane of the Milky Way. Being so close to the star band of the Milky Way means that the foreground stars of our galaxy have crept into the image - the two prominent stars in front of UGC 11537 are intruders within the Milky Way. These bright foreground stars are surrounded by diffraction peaks - imaging artifacts caused by starlight interacting with Hubble's internal structure.



This image is from a series of designed observations. to help astronomers weigh supermassive black holes in distant galaxies. The combination of Hubble observations and ground-based telescope data allowed astronomers to create detailed models of the mass of stars in these galaxies, which in turn helps limit the mass of supermassive black holes.