The irregular galaxy Arp 263 lurks in the background of this image taken by NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope, but the image is dominated by a stellar photobomber, bright star BD+17 2217. . It is located about 25 million light-years away in the constellation Leo.

Two different Hubble studies of the Arp 263 using two Hubble instruments added data to this image. The initial study was part of an effort to observe the positions of recent supernovae, such as SN 2012A, discovered on Arp 263 a little over a decade ago. Astronomers used Hubble’s powerful Wide Angle Camera 3 to search for the remnants of a massive stellar explosion. The second survey is part of a campaign that uses Hubble’s Advanced Scanning Camera to image all the strange galaxies previously unobserved in the Arp catalog, including Arp 263, to find promising objects for further study with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

The intersecting foreground star BD+17 2217 is decorated with two sets of diagonal diffraction spikes. The interaction of light with Hubble’s internal structure means that concentrated bright objects such as stars are surrounded by four prominent spikes. Since this image of BD+17 2217 was created using two Hubble datasets, the spikes in both images surround this stellar photobomber. When Hubble collects the two data sets, the spikes are at different angles because they are in different directions. Source