NASA News · October 16, 2026
NASA’s Hubble Spies Spiral’s Edge
Where it is in your sky
- Object
- NGC 1827 · Galaxy
- Constellation
- Columba
- Best seen
- Evenings from October to February; highest at midnight in December
- Climbs above 20°
- From the South Pole to 33° N
- Never rises
- North of 53° N
- What you need
- A larger telescope (200 mm+) and dark skies
Tonight from your location
From the source
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the edge-on, intermediate spiral galaxy NGC 1827, located roughly 37 million light-years away in the constellation Columba, the Dove. Hubble captured the image as part of a survey looking at 260 satellite galaxies around 22 Milky Way-like host galaxies within a radius of about 32 million light-years from Earth. Hubble has already observed 111 of these satellite galaxies. The remaining galaxies will take an additional 149 Hubble orbits, one orbit for each galaxy, to observe.
The image, taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, reveals bright-blue regions along the galaxy’s disk dotted with dark dust lanes where new stars are likely forming. A bright foreground star appears just to the left of the galaxy’s bright central bulge but is located between us and the galaxy. Its four diffraction spikes are the result of light bending around the internal supports that hold Hubble’s secondary mirror.
Low-mass galaxies like the ones in this Hubble observing program provide a way to test the predictions of cosmological models on small scales, which struggle to match observations. The data Hubble gathers will help us better understand and characterize the properties of low-mass galaxies in Milky Way-like systems, allowing researchers to refine cosmological models.
Claire Andreoli NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Explore an assortment of galaxies with Hubble.
Hubble’s most notable scientific discoveries reflect the broad range of research and the breakthroughs it has achieved.
Explore Hubble’s iconic images of the universe, and view photos of mission operations and astronauts servicing Hubble in space.
From NASA News.
