NASA's Hubble Space Telescope spots bright shining lizard star

New Delhi: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a beautiful image of a galaxy named NGC 7250.

According to the US space agency, the galaxy has bright bursts of star formation and recorded supernova explosions, it blends into the background somewhat thanks to the gloriously bright star hogging the limelight next to it.

And the bright object seen in the image is a single and little-studied star named TYC 3203-450-1, located in the constellation of Lacerta (The Lizard). The star is much closer than the much more distant galaxy.

Astronomers studying distant objects call these stars “foreground stars” and they are often not very happy about them, as their bright light is contaminating the faint light from the more distant and interesting objects they actually want to study.

In this case, TYC 3203-450-1 is million times closer than NGC 7250, which lies more than 45 million light-years away from us, as reported.

It is said that if the star were the same distance from us as NGC 7250, it would hardly be visible in the image.