A Hubble Space Telescope image of the small spiral galaxy NGC 6503
Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA

The European Space Agency’s website of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) recently published a mesmerizing image of a beautiful small galaxy, acquired by HST. Interestingly, the galaxy, known as NGC 6503, is located near the edge of a huge void in space, populated only by a few galaxies. This void, termed the Local Void, is estimated to be about 30 million-150 million light-years wide.
(The light year is a unit of measuring distance in astronomy, and is equal to approximately 10,000 billion km.) 

The image was acquired by HST’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ASC). Star birth regions in NGC 6503 are visible as scattered clouds, glowing in vivid pink color. Although structurally similar to our giant Galaxy, the Milky Way, NGC 6503 is 30,000 light-years across, or only about a third of the size of the Galaxy. It is classified as a dwarf galaxy.

NGC 6503 is approximately 17 million light-years away. It is a nearby galaxy, by the cosmic distance scale. It was discovered in July 1854, by the German astronomer Arthur Auwers. Sophisticated sky surveys have shown that the large scale structure of the universe consists of tremendous aggregations of galaxies, known as superclusters of galaxies and filaments of galaxies, interspersed with immense voids, of diameters up to 500 million light years. 

This HST image was produced by combining images acquired by the ACS, in visual and infrared filters.

References

The European Space Agency’s Hubble Website

Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Senior Astronomy Specialist