The Hubble Space Telescope’s 23-year look at a beautiful blue galaxy

The year is 2000. We are floating in space and come across a side view of a spectacular spiral galaxy. It’s called UGC 10043 and is 150 million light-years away.

Spiral galaxies like this are huge structures of stars, gas and dust characterized by swirling arms radiating from their centers. From where we stand, we observe a bluish light emanating from the arms of our spiral galaxy, telling us that new stars are being born and growing. From this side view, we actually can’t see UGC 10043’s spiral arms, which are surrounded by a thick cloud of cosmic dust that blocks out much of the galaxy’s light anyway. Rather, the galaxy appears to us as a thin, distinctive line through the cosmos.