Hubble Sees a Sparkling Neighbor Galaxy

The galaxy ESO 300-16 looms over this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy, which lies 28.7 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, is a ghostly assemblage of stars which resembles a sparkling cloud. Other distant galaxies and foreground stars complete this astronomical portrait, which was captured by the Advanced Camera for Surveys.
This observation is one of a series which aims to get to know our galactic neighbors. Hubble has observed around three quarters of known galaxies within about 10 megaparsecs of Earth in enough detail to resolve their brightest stars and establish distances to these galaxies. A team of astronomers proposed using small gaps in Hubble’s observing schedule to acquaint ourselves with the remaining quarter of these nearby galaxies.
The megaparsec – meaning one million parsecs – is a unit used by astronomers to chart the mind-bogglingly large distances involved in astronomy. The motion of Earth around the Sun means that stars appear to slightly shift against very distant stars over the course of a year. This small shift is referred to as parallax and is measured in angular units: degrees, minutes, and seconds. One parsec is equivalent to the distance creating a parallax of one-arcsecond and is equivalent to 3.26 light-years or 30.9 trillion kilometers (19.2 trillion miles). The closest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, which lies 1.3 parsecs away.
This recent view of ESO 300-16 was taken using the Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope, which is a joint mission led by NASA and ESA. It is part of a series aimed at surveying Earth's galactic neighbors.
"Around three quarters of the known galaxies suspected to lie within 10 megaparsecs [32 million light-years] of Earth have been observed by Hubble in enough detail to resolve their brightest stars and establish the distances to these galaxies," ESA officials said in the statement. "A team of astronomers proposed using small gaps in Hubble's observing schedule to acquaint ourselves with the remaining quarter of the nearby galaxies."
ESO 300-16 is classified as an irregular galaxy due to its indistinct shape and lack of nuclear bulge or spiral arms. Instead, it resembles the shape of a cloud, comprised of many tiny stars all clumped together.
The stars give off a soft, diffuse light that surrounds a bubble of bright blue gas at the galaxy's core. The brighter, foreground objects represent nearby stars and galaxies, according to the statement.

[atomicplanets]

It's awesome that astronomers can see and understand what's happening far away yet have failed to realize that Mercury is actually Venus' moon.