Hubble Space Telescope Highly Irregular Galaxy ESO 174-1
NASA / ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope recently observed a highly irregular galaxy located 11 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. Classified as ESO 174-1, this galaxy consists of a bright cloud of stars and a faint, zigzagging tendril of dark gas as well as dust.


Hubble Space Telescope Highly Irregular Galaxy ESO 174-1
This spectacular image is actually just one of many in a collection of Hubble observations designed to help astronomers better understand our nearby galactic neighbors. These observations aim to resolve the brightest stars and basic properties of every known galaxy within 10 megaparsecs. What is a parasec? It’s essentially a unit used by astronomers to measure the vast distances to other galaxies – 1 megaparsec translates to 3.26 million light-years – and makes astronomical distances easier to handle.


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The program to capture all of our neighboring galaxies was designed to use the 2-3% of Hubble time available between observations. It’s inefficient for Hubble to make back-to-back observations of objects that are in opposite parts of the sky. Observing programs like the one that captured ESO 174-1 fill the gaps between other observations,” said NASA.