Hubble went supernova hunting and discovered something unexpected: the space photo of the week

Here’s a story for the ages – or maybe a story of the ages.

The latest Hubble Space Telescope image of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 6000 is rich in yellow at its center and blue at its periphery, but it’s what these colors reveal about the age, mass and temperature of the galaxy’s stars that makes the portrait truly fascinating.

Yellow tells the story of the center of NGC 6000, where the stars are old, small and relatively cool. These stars have been shining for billions of years. In astronomy, cool stars are red, while hotter stars are blue. These dominate the outskirts of this galaxy, where its spiral arms are filled with younger, hotter and larger stars. These stars are cosmic newborns.

The image, which is also available as panoramic videowas produced while Hubble was searching for supernova explosions – hence the incomplete framing. The aging space telescope was targeting the faint glow of supernovas called SN 2007ch and SN 2010as, stars that exploded in 2007 and 2010, respectively.

However, when photographing NGC 6000, Hubble also captured something completely different. Look to the right side of the image and you can see four faint broken lines – the trajectory of an asteroid that drifted across Hubble’s field of view when taking four long-exposure images of NGC 6000. The broken lines are red and blue because Hubble used red and blue filters to collect visible light, making it easier for astronomers to compare stars by their colors.

Although it is in the constellation Scorpius, visible in summer from the northern hemisphere, NGC 6000 lies south of the celestial equator, according to The sky live. This means it is more easily visible from the southern hemisphere. However, to see it, you need at least a 10-inch aperture telescope and dark skies.

For more sublime space images, check out our Archives of space photo of the week.