17310

The barred spiral galaxy IC 486 captured by Hubble: on the outskirts of Gemini, about 380 million light-years away. The bright white glow at the center is not an ordinary star field, but an active galactic nucleus.

According to an ESA/Hubble and ESA media release (2026-03-27): IC 486 lies on the edge of Gemini, about 380 million light-years away, and is a barred spiral galaxy—there is a bright bar at the center, with spiral arms extending from the bar ends, winding into a structure close to ring-like. On the disk, faint blue regions mark pockets where stars are forming more recently, while the dust filaments trace areas where molecular gas is denser. The clearly brighter white glow in the middle comes from an active galactic nucleus (AGN): the central supermassive black hole has a mass exceeding roughly 100 million times the mass of the Sun, and radiation from the accretion disk can outshine all the stars across the entire disk.

The imaging data come from observing programs #17310 (PI: M. J. Koss) and #15444 (PI: A. J. Barth), used to systematically compare the nuclear regions and disk structures of nearby active galaxies; the team also included expert classifications, Galaxy Zoo citizen-science input, and experiments in morphological classification using large language models in the same batch of samples.

Independent verification: Daily Galaxy (2026-03-28) restated and confirmed the same figures—about 380 million light-years away, a barred spiral morphology, and a central supermassive black hole exceeding roughly 100 million solar masses—consistent with ESA/Hubble.

Image source: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth
Data as of: ESA/Hubble release 2026-03-27
#Hubble #astronomy