The spiral galaxy seen here by our Hubble Space Telescope (NASAHubble) is located about 130 million light-years away and is classified as an Sc spiral galaxy. But its spiral arms - the dominating feature of spiral galaxies - are almost impossible to see, because it presents itself at an almost perfectly edge-on angle. Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, this galaxy was host to a fascinating and rare event in 2003. A faint supernova appeared about 8,000 light-years below the central bulge. Supernovae are the huge, violent explosions of dying stars, and the one that exploded in this galaxy - not visible in this much later image - was classified as a Type Ib/c supernova. It was particularly interesting because its spectrum showed strong signatures of calcium. Calcium-rich supernovae are rare and hence of great interest to astronomers. Astronomers still struggle to explain these particular explosions as their existence presents a challenge to both observation and theory. In particula...