Unclassifiable unknown celestial object is discovered by the Hubble telescope

 

Z 229-15, a celestial object in the constellation Lyra, is located about 390 million light-years from Earth and was captured in this image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in exquisite clarity. (Photo credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Barth, R. Mushotzky )

The saying says that space is hard. And we would extend that idea to the classification of celestial objects, especially ones like Z 229-15.

Z 229-15 is depicted in a recently released Hubble Space Telescope image. At first look, with its two spiralling arms of stars extending from a brilliant core, Z 229-15 just appears to be a spiral galaxy. But it goes much, much beyond than that.

According to a statement (opens in new tab) issued by the European Space Agency, Z 229-15 is one of those objects that can be categorised in a number of ways (ESA). The statement reads, "Z 229-15 is one of those amazing celestial objects, you will find defined as several various things, should you chose to research it." Z 229-15 cannot be assigned a single categorization, however a number of overlapping categories can be used to collectively characterise this amazing astronomical object.

First and foremost, Z 229-15 is a galaxy, which is a group of stars that are gravitationally bonded.Second, it contains an active galactic nucleus (AGN) or is an AGN itself. An AGN is a galaxy's central area, which is incredibly luminous because of a supermassive black hole at its heart. The material from the galaxy that has been caught in a spinning disc around the black hole as a result of the black hole's powerful gravitational pull is what makes it so bright, not the black hole itself. The brilliance is caused by the disc heating up and emitting enormous amounts of energy throughout the electromagnetic spectrum.

That's not all, either. The AGN of Z 229-15 is a quasar, a particular type of AGN. Extreme brightness and a considerable separation from Earth on a cosmic scale are requirements for an AGN to be labelled as a quasar. The Hubble image demonstrates that Z 229-15 is indeed very bright in the centre. It is also far enough away from Earth to qualify as a quasar because it is 390 million light-years away (albeit this distance makes it a "nearby" quasar).

There's more, for sure. The majority of quasars are so bright that they obscure our vision of the galaxy's stars. However a quasar is referred to as a Seyfert galaxy when it isn't so brilliant, allowing us to view stars. Z 229-15 is undoubtedly a Seyfert galaxy based on the stars that can be seen in its Hubble portrait.

Z 229-15 is a Seyfert galaxy with a quasar-subclass AGN, so to speak. Z 229-15 is "Everything, in one place, all at once," according to ESA, which jointly operates Hubble with NASA; this is a smart allusion to this year's Best Picture winner, "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once."