In the 1950s, when amateur astronomer Leland S. Copeland first discovered “The Lost Galaxy”, he saw an eerie spiral shrouded in dust. Copeland who was a professional poet fond of writing about the cosmos dubbed the spiral "The Lost Galaxy," a name that has stuck some 70 years later.

Scientists today know this galaxy as NGC 4535, one of the largest of the 2,000-or-so galaxies in the Virgo constellation located about 50 million light-years from Earth. When viewed through NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which captured the image, the haze that clouded Copeland's Lost Galaxy disappears to disclose a vivacious sea of stars not so unlike from the Milky Way.

Similar to our home galaxy, The Lost Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy: a vast swirl of stars with a diverse bar structure at its centre. NASA says the colours of those stars can tell us a bit about the galaxy's history.