A new photo from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the nearby irregular galaxy UGC 5829, which is also known as the Spider Galaxy.
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This Hubble image shows UGC 5829, an irregular galaxy some 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo Minor. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / R. Tully / M. Messa.
UGC 5829 resides approximately 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo Minor.
“Despite there not being many observations of this relatively faint galaxy, it has the distinction of having a descriptive soubriquet: the Spider Galaxy,” the Hubble astronomers said in a statement.
“Perhaps the distorted galactic arms with their glowing, star-forming tips bring to mind the clawed legs of an arachnid.”
“Somewhat confusingly, there is another, very similarly nicknamed but otherwise entirely distinct, galaxy known as the Spiderweb Galaxy.”
“This galaxy has also been more extensively imaged, despite the fact that it lies about 300 times further from Earth than the Spider Galaxy does.”
“Fortunately, correct galaxy identification does not depend on casual given names.”
“Rather, known galaxies are recorded in at least one catalogue — and often in several — such as the Uppsala General Catalogue of Galaxies, which gives the Spider Galaxy its more formal title of UGC 5829.”
“This same galaxy also has several different designations in various other catalogues,” they added.
“It is, for example, LEDA 31923 in the Lyon-Meudon Extragalactic Database; MCG+06-24-006 in the Morphological Catalogue of Galaxies; and SDSS J104242.78+342657.3 in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Catalogue.”
“The Spiderweb Galaxy isn’t recorded in all of the same catalogues — each is necessarily limited in scope — but it is included in the LEDA catalogue as LEDA 2826829.”
“It is evidently simpler to not conflate the dull but distinct names LEDA 31923 and LEDA 2826829, than the fun but easily confused Spider and Spiderweb!”
The new image of UGC 5829 is made up of observations from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the near-infrared and optical parts of the spectrum.
It is based on data obtained through four filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
