NASA / ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope recently captured starstruck galaxy NGC 3239, located 25 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo. This patchy, irregular galaxy has patches of recent star formation, and its ragged appearance could be due to its having formed from the merger of two galaxies.
The bright star you see is BD+17 2217 with its two sets of crisscrossing diffraction spikes. Two different Hubble investigations into NGC 3239, using two of the space telescope’s instruments, contributed data to this image. The first was part of an effort to observe the sites of recent supernovae, while the second makes use of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to image all the previously unobserved peculiar galaxies in the Arp catalog.
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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,” said NASA.
