NASA / ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope recently observed UGC 678, a swirling barred spiral galaxy located around 260 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pisces. This nearly face on galaxy has lazily winding spiral arms that seemingly appear to stretch across this image.
If you look closely at the foreground, a smaller edge-on galaxy appears to bisect the upper portion of UGC 678. Barred spiral galaxies basically feature the bar-shaped structure of stars that extend from opposite sides of the galaxy’s central bulge. The form in spiral galaxies when the orbits of stars near the galaxy’s heart become unstable and stretched out, thus forming a bar when their orbits lengthen.
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The bar grows as their gravity captures more and more nearby stars. UGC 678’s bar is faint. It is visible as a diagonal group of stars that stretches from the lower left (7 o’clock) to the upper right (1 o’clock) of the galaxy’s core,” said NASA.
