NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captures a view of ESO 490-017, a dwarf irregular galaxy with a diameter of about 12,000 light-years. The galaxy lies roughly 23 million light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. Because ESO 490-017 has low surface brightness, it appears in the image as a faint, starry concentration rather than a prominent object. Brighter foreground stars stand out and produce recognizable diffraction spikes, partially obscuring the view of the dimmer galaxy behind them.
The image also shows numerous distant galaxies across the background of the view. These background objects appear as red, orange, and beige dots on the dark field, and several show clearer structure, including spiral features. Together, the scene highlights both the difficulty of detecting diffuse, low-brightness targets and the presence of many unrelated galaxies in the telescope’s field of view.
