Hubble telescope captures 'stellar photobomber' lurking in deep space

The European Space Agency has highlighted an image snapped by the famous Hubble Space Telescope, and this time in the limelight is the irregular galaxy known as Arp 263.

The ESA explains on its website that Arp 263 is located 25 million light years away from Earth and resides in the constellation Leo. Arp 263 was created through the merger of two galaxies, and using Hubble's powerful instruments, researchers set out with two investigations in mind.

The first was to observe recent sites of supernovae, and the second, was to image all peculiar galaxies within the Arp catalog, which is part of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys campaign. The data from this campaign will be used to find promising scientific prospects for the world's most powerful space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope.

The above image showcases the irregular, and as explained by ESA in its post, the image is dominated by a star that's called BD+17 2217.

"The interloping foreground star, BD+17 2217, is adorned with two sets of criss-crossing diffraction spikes. The interaction of light with Hubble's internal structure means that concentrated bright objects such as stars are surrounded by four prominent spikes.

Since this image of BD+17 2217 was created using two sets of Hubble data, the spikes from both images surround this stellar photobomber. The spikes are at different angles because Hubble was at different orientations when it collected the two datasets," writes the ESA

If you are interested in reading more about this irregular galaxy, check out this link here.