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Hubble Reveals Surprising Spiral Shape of Galaxy Hosting Young Jet
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Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities Hubble captured this image of supernova SN 2022abvt (the pinkish-white dot at image center) about two months after it was discovered in 2022. ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz)
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A supernova and its host galaxy are the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxy in question is LEDA 132905 in the constellation Sculptor. Even at more than 400 million light-years away, LEDA 132905’s spiral structure is faintly visible, as are patches of bright blue stars.
The bright pinkish-white dot in the center of the image, between the bright center of the galaxy and its faint left edge, is a supernova named SN 2022abvt. Discovered in late 2022, Hubble observed SN 2022abvt about two months later. This image uses data from a study of Type Ia supernovae, which occur when the exposed core of a dead star ignites in a sudden, destructive burst of nuclear fusion. Researchers are interested in this type of supernova because they can use them to measure precise distances to other galaxies.
The universe is a big place, and supernova explosions are fleeting. How is it possible to be in the right place at the right time to catch a supernova when it happens? Today, robotic telescopes that continuously scan the night sky discover most supernovae. The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, spotted SN 2022abvt. As the name suggests, ATLAS tracks down the faint, fast-moving signals from asteroids close to Earth. In addition to searching out asteroids, ATLAS also keeps tabs on objects that brighten or fade suddenly, like supernovae, variable stars, and galactic centers powered by hungry black holes.
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The Death Throes of Stars
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Last Updated Feb 07, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Hubble Space Telescope
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Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 5 Min Read Straight Shot: Hubble Investigates Galaxy with Nine Rings
LEDA 1313424, aptly nicknamed the Bullseye, is two and a half times the size of our Milky Way and has nine rings — six more than any other known galaxy. Credits:
NASA, ESA, Imad Pasha (Yale), Pieter van Dokkum (Yale) NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a cosmic bullseye! The gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424 is rippling with nine star-filled rings after an “arrow” — a far smaller blue dwarf galaxy — shot through its heart. Astronomers using Hubble identified eight visible rings, more than previously detected by any telescope in any galaxy, and confirmed a ninth using data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Previous observations of other galaxies show a maximum of two or three rings.
“This was a serendipitous discovery,” said Imad Pasha, the lead researcher and a doctoral student at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. “I was looking at a ground-based imaging survey and when I saw a galaxy with several clear rings, I was immediately drawn to it. I had to stop to investigate it.” The team later nicknamed the galaxy the “Bullseye.”
LEDA 1313424, aptly nicknamed the Bullseye, is two and a half times the size of our Milky Way and has nine rings — six more than any other known galaxy. High-resolution imagery from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope confirmed eight rings, and data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii confirmed a ninth. Hubble and Keck also confirmed which galaxy dove through the Bullseye, creating these rings: the blue dwarf galaxy that sits to its immediate center-left. NASA, ESA, Imad Pasha (Yale), Pieter van Dokkum (Yale)
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Hubble and Keck’s follow-up observations also helped the researchers prove which galaxy plunged through the center of the Bullseye — a blue dwarf galaxy to its center-left. This relatively tiny interloper traveled like a dart through the core of the Bullseye about 50 million years ago, leaving rings in its wake like ripples in a pond. A thin trail of gas now links the pair, though they are currently separated by 130,000 light-years.
“We’re catching the Bullseye at a very special moment in time,” said Pieter G. van Dokkum, a co-author of the new study and a professor at Yale. “There’s a very narrow window after the impact when a galaxy like this would have so many rings.”
Galaxies collide or barely miss one another quite frequently on cosmic timescales, but it is extremely rare for one galaxy to dive through the center of another. The blue dwarf galaxy’s straight trajectory through the Bullseye later caused material to move both inward and outward in waves, setting off new regions of star formation.
How big is the Bullseye? Our Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light-years in diameter, and the Bullseye is almost two-and-a-half times larger, at 250,000 light-years across.
This illustration compares the size of our own Milky Way galaxy to gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424, nicknamed the Bullseye. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years in diameter, and the Bullseye is almost two-and-a-half times larger, at 250,000 light-years across. NASA, ESA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
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The researchers used Hubble’s crisp vision to carefully to pinpoint the location of most of its rings, since many are piled up at the center. “This would have been impossible without Hubble,” Pasha said.
They used Keck to confirm one more ring. The team suspects a 10th ring also existed, but has faded and is no longer detectable. They estimate it might lie three times farther out than the widest ring in Hubble’s image.
A One-to-One Match with Predictions
Pasha also found a stunning connection between the Bullseye and a long-established theory: The galaxy’s rings appear to have moved outward almost exactly as predicted by models.
“That theory was developed for the day that someone saw so many rings,” van Dokkum said. “It is immensely gratifying to confirm this long-standing prediction with the Bullseye galaxy.”
If viewed from above, it would be more obvious that the galaxy’s rings aren’t evenly spaced like those on a dart board. Hubble’s image shows the galaxy from a slight angle. “If we were to look down at the galaxy directly, the rings would look circular, with rings bunched up at the center and gradually becoming more spaced out the farther out they are,” Pasha explained.
To visualize how these rings may have formed, think about dropping a pebble into a pond. The first ring ripples out, becoming the widest over time, while others continue to form after it.
The researchers suspect that the first two rings in the Bullseye formed quickly and spread out in wider circles. The formation of additional rings may have been slightly staggered, since the blue dwarf galaxy’s flythrough affected the first rings more significantly.
This illustration shows the massive galaxy nicknamed the Bullseye face-on. Dotted circles indicate where each of its rings are, which formed like ripples in a pond after a blue dwarf galaxy (not shown) shot through its core about 50 million years ago. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope helped researchers carefully pinpoint the location of most of its rings, many of which are piled up at the center. Data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii helped the team confirm another ring. NASA, ESA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
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Individual stars’ orbits were largely undisturbed, though groups of stars did “pile up” to form distinguishable rings over millions of years. The gas, however, was carried outward, and mixed with dust to form new stars, further brightening the Bullseye’s rings.
There’s a lot more research to be done to figure out which stars existed before and after the blue dwarf’s “fly through.” Astronomers will now also be able to improve models showing how the galaxy may continue to evolve over billions of years, including the disappearance of additional rings.
Although this discovery was a chance finding, astronomers can look forward to finding more galaxies like this one soon. “Once NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope begins science operations, interesting objects will pop out much more easily,” van Dokkum explained. “We will learn how rare these spectacular events really are.”
The team’s paper was published on the February 4, 2025 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
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Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Claire Blome and Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
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Last Updated Feb 04, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Hubble Space Telescope Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Reshaping Our Cosmic View: Hubble Science Highlights
Hubble’s 35th Anniversary
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By NASA
NASA’s UAVSAR airborne radar instrument captured data in fall 2024 showing the mo-tion of landslides on the Palos Verdes Peninsula following record-breaking rainfall in Southern California in 2023 and another heavy-precipitation winter in 2024. Darker red indicates faster motion.NASA Earth Observatory Analysis of data from NASA radar aboard an airplane shows that the decades-old active landslide area on the Palos Verdes Peninsula has expanded.
Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California used data from an airborne radar to measure the movement of the slow-moving landslides on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County. The analysis determined that, during a four-week period in the fall of 2024, land in the residential area slid toward the ocean by as much as 4 inches (10 centimeters) per week.
Portions of the peninsula, which juts into the Pacific Ocean just south of the city of Los Angeles, are part of an ancient complex of landslides and has been moving for at least the past six decades, affecting hundreds of buildings in local communities. The motion accelerated, and the active area expanded following record-breaking rainfall in Southern California in 2023 and heavy precipitation in early 2024.
To create this visualization, the Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team used data from four flights of NASA’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) that took place between Sept. 18 and Oct. 17. The UAVSAR instrument was mounted to a Gulfstream III jet flown out of NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, and the four flights were planned to estimate the speed and direction of the landslides in three dimensions.
In the image above, colors indicate how fast parts of the landslide complex were moving in late September and October, with the darkest reds indicating the highest speeds. The arrows represent the direction of horizontal motion. The white solid lines are the boundaries of the active landslide area as defined in 2007 by the California Geological Survey.
“In effect, we’re seeing that the footprint of land experiencing significant impacts has expanded, and the speed is more than enough to put human life and infrastructure at risk,” said Alexander Handwerger, the JPL landslide scientist who performed the analysis.
The insights from the UAVSAR flights were part of a package of analyses by the ARIA team that also used data from ESA’s (the European Space Agency’s) Copernicus Sentinel-1A/B satellites. The analyses were provided to California officials to support the state’s response to the landslides and made available to the public at NASA’s Disaster Mapping Portal.
Handwerger is also the principal investigator for NASA’s upcoming Landslide Climate Change Experiment, which will use airborne radar to study how extreme wet or dry precipitation patterns influence landslides. The investigation will include flights over coastal slopes spanning the California coastline.
More About ARIA, UAVSAR
The ARIA mission is a collaboration between JPL and Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA, to leverage radar and optical remote-sensing, GPS, and seismic observations for science as well as to aid in disaster response. The project investigates the processes and impacts of earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, fires, subsurface fluid movement, and other natural hazards.
UAVSAR has flown thousands of radar missions around the world since 2007, studying phenomena such as glaciers and ice sheets, vegetation in ecosystems, and natural hazards like earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides.
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Last Updated Jan 31, 2025 Related Terms
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Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Spots a Supernova
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a supernova in the constellation Gemini. ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz) The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is a supernova-hosting galaxy located about 600 million light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Hubble captured this image roughly two months after a supernova named SN 2022aajn was discovered. The supernova is visible as a blue dot at the center of the image, brightening the hazy body of the galaxy.
Other than the announcement of its discovery in November 2022, SN 2022aajn has never been the subject of published research. Why then would Hubble observe this supernova? SN 2022aajn is what’s known as a Type Ia supernova, which results from the explosion of the core of a dead star. Supernovae of this type help astronomers measure the distance to faraway galaxies. This is possible because Type Ia supernovae have the same intrinsic luminosity — no matter how bright they seem from Earth, they put out the same amount of light as other Type Ia supernovae. By comparing the observed brightness to the known intrinsic brightness, researchers can calculate the distance to the supernova and its host galaxy.
This seemingly simple way of measuring distances is complicated by cosmic dust. The farther away a supernova is, the fainter and redder it will appear — but intergalactic dust can make a supernova appear fainter and redder as well. To understand this complication, researchers will use Hubble to survey a total of 100 Type Ia supernovae in seven wavelength bands from ultraviolet to near-infrared. This image combines data taken at four infrared wavelengths. Infrared light passes through dust more easily than visible or ultraviolet light. By comparing the brightness of the sampled supernovae across different wavelengths, researchers can disentangle the effects of dust and distance, helping to improve measurements of galaxies billions of light-years away.
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Last Updated Jan 30, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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In this video frame, Jason Dworkin holds up a vial that contains part of the sample from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer) mission in 2023. Dworkin is the mission’s project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.Credit: NASA/James Tralie Studies of rock and dust from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Regolith Explorer) spacecraft have revealed molecules that, on our planet, are key to life, as well as a history of saltwater that could have served as the “broth” for these compounds to interact and combine.
The findings do not show evidence for life itself, but they do suggest the conditions necessary for the emergence of life were widespread across the early solar system, increasing the odds life could have formed on other planets and moons.
“NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission already is rewriting the textbook on what we understand about the beginnings of our solar system,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Asteroids provide a time capsule into our home planet’s history, and Bennu’s samples are pivotal in our understanding of what ingredients in our solar system existed before life started on Earth.”
In research papers published Wednesday in the journals Nature and Nature Astronomy, scientists from NASA and other institutions shared results of the first in-depth analyses of the minerals and molecules in the Bennu samples, which OSIRIS-REx delivered to Earth in 2023.
Detailed in the Nature Astronomy paper, among the most compelling detections were amino acids – 14 of the 20 that life on Earth uses to make proteins – and all five nucleobases that life on Earth uses to store and transmit genetic instructions in more complex terrestrial biomolecules, such as DNA and RNA, including how to arrange amino acids into proteins.
Scientists also described exceptionally high abundances of ammonia in the Bennu samples. Ammonia is important to biology because it can react with formaldehyde, which also was detected in the samples, to form complex molecules, such as amino acids – given the right conditions. When amino acids link up into long chains, they make proteins, which go on to power nearly every biological function.
These building blocks for life detected in the Bennu samples have been found before in extraterrestrial rocks. However, identifying them in a pristine sample collected in space supports the idea that objects that formed far from the Sun could have been an important source of the raw precursor ingredients for life throughout the solar system.
“The clues we’re looking for are so minuscule and so easily destroyed or altered from exposure to Earth’s environment,” said Danny Glavin, a senior sample scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and co-lead author of the Nature Astronomy paper. “That’s why some of these new discoveries would not be possible without a sample-return mission, meticulous contamination-control measures, and careful curation and storage of this precious material from Bennu.”
While Glavin’s team analyzed the Bennu samples for hints of life-related compounds, their colleagues, led by Tim McCoy, curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, and Sara Russell, cosmic mineralogist at the Natural History Museum in London, looked for clues to the environment these molecules would have formed. Reporting in the journal Nature, scientists further describe evidence of an ancient environment well-suited to kickstart the chemistry of life.
Ranging from calcite to halite and sylvite, scientists identified traces of 11 minerals in the Bennu sample that form as water containing dissolved salts evaporates over long periods of time, leaving behind the salts as solid crystals.
Similar brines have been detected or suggested across the solar system, including at the dwarf planet Ceres and Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
Although scientists have previously detected several evaporites in meteorites that fall to Earth’s surface, they have never seen a complete set that preserves an evaporation process that could have lasted thousands of years or more. Some minerals found in Bennu, such as trona, were discovered for the first time in extraterrestrial samples.
“These papers really go hand in hand in trying to explain how life’s ingredients actually came together to make what we see on this aqueously altered asteroid,” said McCoy.
For all the answers the Bennu sample has provided, several questions remain. Many amino acids can be created in two mirror-image versions, like a pair of left and right hands. Life on Earth almost exclusively produces the left-handed variety, but the Bennu samples contain an equal mixture of both. This means that on early Earth, amino acids may have started out in an equal mixture, as well. The reason life “turned left” instead of right remains a mystery.
“OSIRIS-REx has been a highly successful mission,” said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA Goddard and co-lead author on the Nature Astronomy paper. “Data from OSIRIS-REx adds major brushstrokes to a picture of a solar system teeming with the potential for life. Why we, so far, only see life on Earth and not elsewhere, that’s the truly tantalizing question.”
NASA Goddard provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations. NASA Goddard and KinetX Aerospace were responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx takes place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information on the OSIRIS-REx mission, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
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karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Rani Gran
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Last Updated Jan 29, 2025 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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