UGCA 307 hangs in the background of irregularly shaped galaxies in this image taken by NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The small galaxy consists of a diffuse band of stars containing red gas bubbles that mark recent star forming regions and is located about 26 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Vora. UGCA 307 looks like a small shard of star, but is a miniature dwarf galaxy with no clear structure and looks like nothing more than a hazy patch of cloud that comes and goes.

This image is part of Hubble’s project to search for all known nearby galaxies and gives astronomers a better understanding of our galactic environment. Prior to this series of observations, Hubble surveyed about three-quarters of nearby galaxies in enough detail to identify the brightest stars and understand the stars found in each galaxy. This Hubble project aimed to explore the remaining quarter of the nearest galaxies using short gaps in Hubble’s observation plane.

This crystal clear image was taken with the Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) attached to the telescope during maintenance of the 3D mission in 2002. ACS replaced one of Hubble’s original tools, the Faint Object Camera made by ESA.