Hubble Telescope Discovers New Spiral Galaxy

First Posted: May 16, 2016 08:36 AM EDT

In its 26^th anniversary, the Hubble Space Telescope captured a spiral galaxy, named NGC 6814 that looks a lot like a snowflake. The galaxy's extremely bright nucleus s also has arms ripples with a pattern of dark dust.

Hubble Spots Stunning Spiral Snowflake Galaxy... https://t.co/RRMv3eH7Nh pic.twitter.com/reS9GisUjW

— Particle Astronomy (@ParticleAstro) May 15, 2016

The extremely bright nucleus is indicative of the galaxy being a Seyfert galaxy - which means that it has an active center and that it can emit strong bursts of radiation. The galaxy is said to be a highly variable source of X-ray radiation, which led scientists to believe that is has a supermassive black hole and a mass that is about 18 million times compared to that of the sun.

NASA said that the galaxy is active, with many regions of ionized gasses studded along its arms. In these clouds of gas are star formations, which have only recently taken place, as shown by the brilliant blue stars that have been visible throughout the galaxy.

The Hubble was deployed in 1990 and when the space shuttle, Discovery. Shortly after it was deployed, the observatory had a flaw that affected the clarity of its early images, but after repairs done by NASA astronauts, the telescope kept on revealing wonders of the universe.

The Daily Mail noted that spiral galaxies make up for more than half of the galaxies in the universe, and all of them are unique - like snowflakes. The NGC 6814 is about 75,000 light years across, which means that it's small, about half the size of the Milky Way galaxy.

The rare, super spiral galaxies like NGC 6814 are a mystery to researchers, mostly because it has been a mystery how such these types of giants could ever have been formed. NASA astrophysicist Patrick Ogle said, "we have found a previously unrecognized class of spiral galaxies that are as luminous and massive as the biggest, brightest galaxies we know of. It's as if we have just discovered a new land animal stomping around that is the size of an elephant but had shockingly gone unnoticed by zoologists."