The spiral galaxy UGC 5460 has recently experienced two supernova explosions. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Jacobson-Galán, A. Filippenko, J. Mauerha)
What is it: Spiral galaxy UGC 5460
Where is it located: 60 million light years away from us in the constellation Ursa Major.
When the information was published: February 21, 2025.
Why it matters: This stunning new image of a spiral galaxy — with a bright star at the top — was recently captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The image shows the galaxy's central band of stars, its spiral arms, and young blue star clusters. Meanwhile, in the upper left corner, there's a star located just 577 light-years away in the Milky Way.
This galaxy has seen two major supernova explosions in the last 14 years. These events are important to astronomers and represent the final, destructive stages of some massive stars. A supernova explosion can temporarily have the power equivalent to 100 billion stars, dwarfing its parent galaxies.
Supernovae play a key role in distributing heavy elements throughout interstellar space, which in turn facilitates the formation of new stars.
These stellar explosions may be inevitable for certain classes of stars, but they can happen in very different ways – which is what scientists think was the case with two recent supernova explosions in this picturesque spiral galaxy.
Full image UGC 5460.
For example, in 2015, astronomers observed the star SN 2015 explode as a “core-collapse” supernova, where a massive star exhausted its nuclear fuel and collapsed under gravity, ejecting its outer layers into UGC 5460. The explosion prompted astronomers to create a new image of the galaxy as they sought to understand how the supernova shock wave interacts with the surrounding interstellar gas.
Meanwhile, an earlier supernova explosion in 2011, called SN 2011ht, initially looked like a core collapse event. However, astronomers suspect it may have been a so-called “luminous blue variable” – a rare type of massive star that explodes as a supernova but leaves the star intact. Hubble is currently searching for a surviving star at the site of the explosion.
This is a detailed image of UGC 5460 taken with a wide-field
Sourse: www.livescience.com
