While the James Webb Space Telescope has received a lot of attention lately, its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, continues to impress; This time around, galaxy NGC 6956 is a near-perfect example of a barred galaxy located about 214 million light-years from Earth.

Named after the very distinctive “strip” of stars crossing the galactic core, bar galaxies are among the most common types of galaxies in the known universe. make up about 70% of all galaxies. Banded structures are also much more common in galaxies with active galactic cores, as gas and other material are fed into the galactic core along these bands.

This process eventually helps to destabilize the barbellHowever, the more the mass is directed towards the galactic core, the more unstable the rod becomes, eventually softening the rod into a more conventional spiral formation, As in NGC 2985– this is what most people think of when they think of a spiral galaxy.

By Description of NASA imageThis latest image of NGC 6956 was targeting Cepheid variables, stars whose brightness regularly varies between bright and dim. These periods of brightness and dimming are directly related to the actual brightness of the star, we can calculate these changes in apparent brightness relative to the actual brightness of the stars, which allows us to determine their distance from us.

This is an important way for astronomers to determine the distance to extragalactic objects like NGC 6956 because we now know of several other ways to do it. NGC 6956 also has other interesting features, such as the visible Type Ia supernova, which is the product of the explosion of a white dwarf star by accumulating matter from a companion star.

This type of supernova is another important method for determining the distance to distant galaxies, as astronomers can measure how quickly a supernova is extinguished to help measure its distance from Earth. And while accurately filling out a galactic map can be useful in itself, repeatedly measuring distances to these extragalactic objects is an important tool for understanding the current rate of expansion in the universe.