If you were approaching the edge of a spiral galaxy, arriving from afar through the cosmos, it might look something like this.

What is it?

In this new snapshot by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), we can see the edge of the spiral galaxy NGC 1827. Found about 37 million light-years from Earth, this galaxy sparkles in this side-on view.

Not all spiral galaxies are the same. This galaxy is what is known as an "intermediate" spiral, which means that its structure sits somewhere between that of a barred and unbarred spiral galaxy. Barred galaxies have a distinctive central, bar-shaped structure, while the unbarred variety lacks this bar and can look more like circular spirals.

NGC 1827's spiral shape isn't clear from the side, however. From this perspective, we see its twinkling edge, speckled with stars and woven together with brown ribbons of dust.

Why is it incredible?

Beneath the beauty of this spiral edge lies an expansive, cosmic landscape. Bright blue stars dot the spiral's side, with one particularly luminous star taking the spotlight with four diffraction spikes — created by light bending through the inner workings of Hubble's camera — emanating from its center.

This image was captured as part of a larger Hubble survey that's exploring 260 satellite galaxies, which are galaxies gravitationally bound to larger hosts. Hubble is specifically looking to survey satellite galaxies that lie near host galaxies similar to our own Milky Way.

So far, Hubble has spotted 111 such satellites and will continue to observe, hunting for the rest.

By studying satellite galaxies like this one, which also happens to be an especially low-mass galaxy, researchers could better understand the complicated dynamics both within the galaxies themselves and between them and their host galaxies.

In the constellation Cepheus lies the barred spiral galaxy NGC 6951. Due to its stellar activity, the galaxy has become a favorite for astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope.

What is it?

Orbiting above Earth's atmosphere, Hubble observes galaxies like NGC 6951 in visible and infrared light, capturing details that ground-based telescopes cannot. Its images have illuminated how galaxies form, evolve and recycle their material through generations of star birth and death.

In Hubble's recent image, NGC 6951 unfurls its graceful spiral arms, covered in red nebulae glowing with hydrogen gas, a key fuel for new stars.

Where is it?

The spiral galaxy NGC 6951 is located 70 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cepheus.

Why is it amazing?

Crossing the core of NGC 6951 is a bar of stars, a common feature in elongated spiral galaxies that acts as a kind of galactic conveyor belt, channeling gas inward toward the nucleus. That flow of gas gives rise to one of the galaxy's most captivating features: a circumnuclear starburst ring about 3,800 light years wide that encircles the galactic heart.

Within this ring, the conditions are just right for an intense burst of star formation. The bar funnels cold gas to the central region, where it collects and compresses, triggering the birth of new stars at a significant rate. Using Hubble's data, astronomers have identified more than 80 possible star clusters inside this ring, many less than 100 million years old, though the spiral galaxy itself has likely persisted for over a billion years.

Want to learn more?

You can learn more about the Hubble Telescope and the process of stellar evolution.

The Hubble Space Telescope searches the universe to understand how planets, stars, and galaxies form. Recently, it captured this image of a nebula known as GN 04.32.8 within a larger stellar nursery called the Taurus Molecular Cloud.

What is it?

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the GN 04.32.8 nebula is classified as a reflection nebula, as it does not emit its own light, but instead its clouds of space dust reflect the light of nearby stars.

The reflection nebula is more brightly illuminated around three young bright stars, the centermost being star V1025 Tauri. This star is a variable star, meaning that it's very chaotic and active as it's beginning its stellar evolution.

Where is it?

The Taurus Molecular Cloud, where GN 04.32.8 lies, is in the constellation Taurus, around 480 light-years from Earth.

Why is it amazing?

The Taurus Molecular Cloud is one of the closest and most well-known stellar nurseries, making it an easy place to study how stars are born and evolve.

But it's not the only thing in this picture that's newly formed. Lower down in this image is a small squished orange spot with a dark line through it. It's easy to miss but important to study, as it's a newly formed protostar surrounded by a protoplanetary disk. Because the disk is edge-on to the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers can zoom in to further study how this disk formed, revealing more about the early universe.

Want to learn more?

You can read more about baby stars and the Hubble Space Telescope's photographs as astronomers continue peering deep into our universe.

A new Hubble Space Telescope image shows the tiny galaxy UGC 5189A, located about 150 million light-years away in the constellation Leo, in stunning detail.

The space telescope, which has been observing the universe in infrared since 1990, has been studying this galaxy since 2010, with scientists using this investigation to learn more about a supernova that occurred in this galaxy over 150 million years ago.

Over just three years, this supernova called SN 2010jl emitted at least 2.5 billion times more visible energy than the sun released over the same timeframe across all wavelengths.

Related: Hubble Telescope finds surprising source of brightest fast radio burst ever

SN 2010jl is a Type II supernova meaning that it marks the death of a massive star that, during its life, would have had a mass of at least 40 to 50 times that of the sun, Hubble officials wrote in an image description. These explosions occur when these massive stars have run out of the fuel for nuclear fusion, and the energy that for millions or billions of years supports them against the inward push of gravity ceases. 

While studying supernovas themselves is of immense value to scientists, examining the wreckage that these cosmic explosions leave behind can be equally fruitful. For example, studying the environments around detonated stars can show the conditions needed to drive a supernova and how that supernova changes its surroundings. 

This interest means Hubble has found itself directed at UGC 5189A many times. This new picture is created from data collected during the long-serving space telescope's last three observation periods of the distant galaxy, which is just 36,000 light-years across, making it diminutive compared to our 100,000 light-year-wide galaxy, the Milky Way.

The image shows UGC 5189A as a flat, somewhat misshapen disk with a warped upward curve. 

The right-hand side of the galaxy is marked by "blue fizz" that represents plumes of bright gas and dust. The left side of UGC 5189A is less dramatic and striking, slightly dimmer with patchier coverings of gas and dust. 

Outside the main bright disk of the galaxy, a dark coffee-colored trail of gas underlines UGC 5189A and leads up away to the top left-hand corner of the image. 

While the background of the galaxy is mostly dark, a few small galaxies can be seen punctuating the inky blackness, and one star is clearly visible in the top right-hand corner of the Hubble image.

Hubble hasn't just been studying UGC 5189A to zoom in on supernova wreckage. The space telescope has also examined several other supernova-hosting galaxies located around 1,000 million light-years away that saw stellar explosions in their recent pasts, at least as we see them. 

A star's demise shines in stunning detail in an image released by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The image captures the Calabash Nebula, which is 1.4 light-years across and located 5,000 light-years from Earth. It's better known as the Rotten Egg Nebula, because it contains large amounts of sulfur, part of the compound that gives sulfur springs and rotten eggs the same unfortunate smell.

The system is in the middle of a violent transition: A red giant star began to shed its outer layers of gas and dust rapidly, accelerating them in opposite directions. The gas visible in yellow here is moving as fast as 1 million km/h (600,000 mph). While larger stars might flame out in a supernova explosion, lower-mass stars undergo this comparatively mild departure. Calabash was a star of that size, as is Earth's sun currently. [Strange Nebula Shapes: What Do You See?]

The gas in blue is the surrounding material being pushed out of the way. The big acceleration likely started about 800 years ago, according to NASA. But the frantic pace won't last long, on a cosmic scale, before it transitions to a more long-lasting, slowly expanding feature.

"Astronomers rarely capture a star in this phase of its evolution, because it occurs within the blink of an eye — in astronomical terms," European Space Agency officials said in a statement. "Over the next thousand years, the nebula is expected to evolve into a fully fledged planetary nebula."

 Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.