This hazy image shows a galaxy called Messier 85, captured in all its delicate, hazy glory by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Messier 85 is inclined towards the constellation of the Coma of Berenices and is located about 50 million light-years from Earth. It was first discovered in 1781 by Charles Messier's colleague Pierre Méchain and was included in the Messier catalog of celestial bodies.

The intriguing features of Messier 85 lie somewhere between the lenticular and elliptical galaxies and appear to interact with its two neighbors: the beautiful spiral NGC 4394 at the upper left, out of frame, and the small elliptical galaxy MCG 3-32-38, located outside the frame at the mid-bottom.

The galaxy contains about 400 billion stars, most of them very old. However, the central region is home to a population of relatively young stars that are only a few billion years old; These stars are thought to have formed in a late burst of star formation, possibly triggered by the merger of Messier 85 with another galaxy more than four billion years ago. The Messier 85 has another potentially odd quality. Almost every galaxy is thought to have a supermassive black hole at its center, but based on velocity measurements of stars in this galaxy, it's unclear whether Messier 85 contains such a black hole.

This image combines infrared, visible and ultraviolet observations from Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 .