The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of a little known galaxy called UGC 12682.
This Hubble image shows the irregular galaxy UGC 12682. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.
UGC 12682 is an irregular galaxy located about 70 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus.
Also known as LEDA 71801 and DDO 218, the galaxy is distorted and oddly-structured, with several regions of strong star formation.
The current star-formation rate of UGC 12682 results in 0.07 the mass of the Sun in new stars each year.
Although this seems low for a ‘star forming’ galaxy, it is consistent with its brightness.
In November 2008, an extremely low luminosity and energy supernova called SN 2008ha was observed in UGC 12682.
The mysterious explosion was first spotted by Caroline Moore, a 14-year-old student from upstate New York. This made her the youngest person at the time to have discovered a supernova.
For a short time, SN 2008ha was 25 million times brighter than the Sun.
Follow-up observations by professional astronomers showed that SN 2008ha was peculiarly interesting in many different ways.
It is one of the faintest supernovae ever observed and after the explosion it expanded very slowly, suggesting that the explosion did not release copious amounts of energy as usually expected.
Astronomers have now classified SN 2008ha as a subclass of a Type Ia supernova, which is the explosion of a white dwarf that hungrily accretes matter from a companion star.
SN 2008ha may have been the result of a partially failed supernova, explaining why the explosion failed to decimate the whole star.
