Hubble Area Telescope picture of NGC 474, a huge elliptical galaxy NGC 474 positioned about 100 million light-years from Earth. Credit score: NASA, ESA, and D. Carter (Liverpool John Moores College); Picture processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic College of America)
This new NASA Hubble Area Telescope picture captures the central area of the big elliptical galaxy NGC 474. Positioned round 100 million light-years from Earth, NGC 474 spans roughly 250,000 light-years throughout – that’s 2.5 occasions bigger than our personal Milky Approachgalaxy!
Together with its gigantic measurement, NGC 474 has a collection of complicated layered shells that encompass its spherical-shaped core. The origin of those shells is unknown, however astronomers theorize that they often is the aftereffects of the enormous galaxy absorbing a number of smaller galaxies. In an identical method to how a pebble creates ripples on a pond when dropped into the water, the absorbed galaxy creates waves that kind the shells.
Most elliptical galaxies are related to galaxy clusters, however NGC 474 is in a comparatively empty a part of area. Solely a a lot smaller spiral galaxy, NGC 470, is close by and visual within the Digital Sky Survey picture above. This stunning spiral will doubtless succumb to NGC 474’s gravitational pull billions of years from now, probably creating much more complicated shells across the big elliptical. Credit score: NASA, ESA, D. Carter (Liverpool John Moores College), DSS; Picture processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic College of America)
About 10% of elliptical galaxies have shell constructions, however not like nearly all of elliptical galaxies, that are related to galaxy clusters, shelled ellipticals normally lie in comparatively empty area. It might be that they’ve cannibalized their neighbors.
The picture was created utilizing knowledge from Hubble’s Superior Digital camera for Surveys. Extra gap-filling knowledge was offered by Hubble’s Large Area and Planetary Digital camera 2 and Large Area Digital camera 3. The colour blue represents seen blue mild whereas the colour orange represents near-infrared mild that's simply out of the vary of human imaginative and prescient.
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