Perspective is everything, especially in images of the deep cosmos. This image was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and it shows barred spiral galaxy NGC 4907 at the top, with a bright star shining directly below it.
The galaxy is 270 million lightyears away, while the star is located within our own Galaxy and so much closer: 100,000 times closer in fact, residing about 2,500 lightyears away.
NGC 4907 is known as a barred spiral galaxy because of its spiral arms and the bar-shaped structure of stars and cosmic material running through its centre.
The galaxy is a member of the Coma Cluster, a group of over 1,000 galaxies, some of which can be seen in this image around NGC 4907.
The spikes emanating from the star are a visual artefact known as diffraction spikes, caused by starlight entering the Hubble telescope ad being slightly disturbed by its internal support struts.
Image stats
Observatory Hubble Space Telescope
Release date 3 August 2020
Image credit ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gregg
