A picturesque galaxy 40 million light-years away, NGC 5530 dazzles with its patchy spiral arms in the constellation Lupus.
Today’s Hubble Space Telescope image features the striking spiral galaxy NGC 5530, located about 40 million light-years away in the constellation Lupus (The Wolf). NGC 5530 is classified as a flocculent spiral galaxy, meaning its spiral arms appear soft and patchy rather than sharply defined.
Although some galaxies have bright cores powered by active supermassive black holes, the bright spot near the center of NGC 5530 isn’t one of them. Instead, it’s actually a foreground star from within our own Milky Way galaxy, located just 10,000 light-years from Earth. By chance, this star happens to lie in the same line of sight, creating the illusion that it sits at the galaxy’s core.
If you had pointed a backyard telescope at NGC 5530 on the evening of September 13, 2007, you would have seen another bright point of light adorning the galaxy. That night, Australian amateur astronomer Robert Evans discovered a supernova, named SN 2007IT, by comparing NGC 5530’s appearance through the telescope to a reference photo of the galaxy.
While it’s remarkable to discover even one supernova using this painstaking method, Evans has in fact discovered more than 40 supernovae this way! This particular discovery was truly serendipitous: it’s likely that the light from the supernova had completed its 40-million-year journey to Earth just days before the explosion was discovered.
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