NGC 6217 is relatively close by, at a
distance of roughly 80 million light years (note that some early
press said it was 6 million light years away, which is
incorrect). The gas and stars in the middle form an exquisite
rectangular bar across the core due to complicated gravitational
interactions, and you can easily pick out huge numbers of
glowing pink star forming areas, where stars are being born in
prodigious quantities. And even from this vast distance — 800
quintillion kilometers (500 quintillion miles) — Hubble can
still pick out individual stars in the spiral arms. These are
the biggest, baddest, and brightest ones, the stars that will
someday explode as monstrous supernovae… and you can rest
assured astronomers will be using Hubble or its successors to
observe them when they do.
