The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the galaxy NGC 7250.
This image shows the irregular galaxy NGC 7250, which lies in the constellation Lacerta, about 31 million light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.
NGC 7250, also known as LEDA 68535, Mrk 907, and UGC 11980, is a 13th-magnitude irregular galaxy.
It was discovered on November 8, 1790 by the English astronomer William Herschel.
NGC 7250 is located in the constellation Lacerta, approximately 31 million light-years away.
It is about 25,000 light-years across and is characterized by the ‘dual cores’ in its center.
The dual-core feature might be interpreted by the interaction of two galaxies in the past.
NGC 7250 is also a starburst galaxy, meaning it is currently undergoing a period of exceptionally high rates of star formation.
In 2013, a Type Ia supernova — now called SN 2013dy — was discovered in NGC 7250 by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search and Japanese astronomer Kuniaki Goto.
Despite being remarkable in its own right, NGC 7250 blends into the background somewhat thanks to the gloriously bright star hogging the limelight next to it.
This bright object is a single and little-studied star named TYC 3203-450-1.
Astronomers studying distant objects call these stars ‘foreground stars’ and they are often not very happy about them, as their bright light is contaminating the faint light from the more distant and interesting objects they actually want to study.
This image of NGC 7250 is a composite of separate exposures acquired by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).
It is based on data obtained through four WFC3 filters.
The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
