14 DAY TRIAL // Astronomers operating the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have just released a new image of the extremely wound spiral galaxy ESO 498-G5. The object, located in the Pyxis constellation, is about 100 million light-years away from Earth and displays extremely interesting spiral arms.
The object is very rare, since one of its main characteristics is that its spiral arms wind all the way around its center, creating the illusion of a double-spiral galaxy. This image was collected using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument, in optical and infrared wavelengths.
In other spiral galaxies, the central areas bulge outwards, and are filled with a very large number of stars. As such, from a distance, they appear as a very bright globe of bright light, around which the spiral arms spin. This is not the case with ESO 498-G5.
The object's structure is very well defined even in its central areas, with the exception of a small portion at its very core, where numerous stars most likely orbit a supermassive black hole.