This amazing spiral galaxy is known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy and is located 12 million lightyears from Earth.
The image was captured with the Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO).
Here are six reasons why the galaxy is so special.
Newborn stars are blasting away cosmic material
Also known as Messier 83, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is a hotbed of cosmic activity.
Its amazingly defined spiral arms are filled with large pink blobs and tiny blue dots.
The clusters of blue are scorching hot young stars, while the pink regions represent hydrogen gas.
These newborn stars emit powerful ultraviolet radiation that blasts away surrounding gas, destroying the very ingredients out of which they were formed.
The galaxy's bars are feeding its central black hole
The bright centre of the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is a result of the supermassive black hole residing at its core.
This cosmic behemoth is being fed material by the prominent bars seen stretching from the arms into the centre.
The Southern Pinwheel is a 'barred spiral galaxy' and these arms are funnelling material inwards, feeding the black hole at the centre.
Material falls in and the enormous amounts of energy generated as this happens causes the galaxy's core to shine brightly.
Black holes can be incredibly bright objects, despite their name, and this is more than evident in the case of Messier 83.
The Southern Pinwheel is in a deep-sky hall of fame
In the 18th century, a French comet hunter called Charles Messier began compiling what is now one of the most famous catalogues of deep-sky objects.
The list contains multiple galaxies, star clusters and nebulae, and is a 'who's who' of popular targets for astronomers.
However, Messier had actually intended the list to be a catalogue of objects to avoid!
As a dedicated comet hunter, Messier was constantly irritated by deep-sky objects that he mistook for being a comet, and so he started to catalogue and name them all.
The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is number 83 on the list, which is why it's known as Messier 83, or M83.
Despite Messier's intentions, this amazing galaxy has been immortalised in the Messier Catalogue, and is now a favourite among astronomers, amateur and professional.
It may have collided with another galaxy
The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is just 50,000 lightyears across, making it smaller than our Milky Way Galaxy.
Yet still, it has a higher rate of star formation.
What could have caused such an energetic burst of star formation? Astronomers think it may have been jump-started by a past merger with another galaxy.
Acknowledgement: William Blair (Johns Hopkins University)
The collision could have given it two black holes
In 2006, astronomers discovered a previously unknown concentration of mass at the centre of the Southern Pinwheel, which may be a second nucleus
This could be a result of the galaxy having collided with another galaxy in the past: perhaps the same collision that kick-started its star formation.
These two nuclei could each contain black holes, which astronomers say will collide together in about 60 million years.
The Southern Pinwheel is host to exploding stars
Messier is host to multiple populations of newborn stars, but it also contains its fair share of dying stars, too.
Astronomers have witnessed six exploding stars known as supernovae over the past century, but the Southern Pinwheel is estimated to be filled with hundreds of thousands of supernova remnants.
