Astronomers utilizing the NASA/ESA Hubble House Telescope have captured a shocking new picture of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1559.
This Hubble picture reveals NGC 1559, a barred spiral galaxy some 32 million light-years away within the constellation of Reticulum. Picture credit score: Hubble / ESA / NASA / F. Belfiore / W. Yuan / J. Lee / PHANGS-HST Workforce / A. Riess / Ok. Takáts / D. de Martin & M. Zamani, ESA / Hubble.
NGC 1559 is positioned roughly 32 million light-years away within the southern constellation of Reticulum.
In any other case identified as ESO 84-10, IRAS 04170-6253 or LEDA 14814, this galaxy was found by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop on November 6, 1826.
NGC 1559 has large spiral arms chock-full of star formation, and is receding from us at a velocity of about 1,300 km/s.
It comprises a mass of round 10 billion photo voltaic lots — whereas this may increasingly sound like so much, that’s nearly 100 instances much less large than our Milky Manner Galaxy.
Though NGC 1559 seems to sit down close to the Massive Magellanic Cloud, that is only a trick of perspective.
In actuality, the galaxy is bodily nowhere close to the Massive Magellanic Cloud in house — in reality, it actually is a loner, missing the corporate of any close by galaxies or membership of any galaxy cluster.
This new picture of NGC 1559 is made up of observations from Hubble’s Vast Area Digital camera 3 (WFC3) within the ultraviolet, infrared, and optical components of the spectrum.
It’s based mostly on information obtained by way of ten filters. The colour outcomes from assigning totally different hues to every monochromatic picture related to a person filter.
“The picture spans Hubble’s sensitivity to gentle, from ultraviolet round 275 nanometers (nm) by way of blue, inexperienced and purple to near-infrared at 1,600 nm,” the Hubble astronomers mentioned in an announcement.
“This permits details about many various astrophysical processes within the galaxy to be recorded: a notable instance is the purple 656-nm filter used right here.”
“Hydrogen atoms which get ionised can emit gentle at this specific wavelength, referred to as H-alpha emission,” they defined.
“New stars forming in a molecular cloud, made largely of hydrogen fuel, emit copious quantities of ultraviolet gentle which is absorbed by the cloud, however which ionises it and causes it to glow with this H-alpha gentle.”
“Due to this fact, filtering to detect solely this gentle offers a dependable means to detect areas of star formation (referred to as HII areas), proven on this picture by the brilliant purple and pink colors of the blossoming patches filling NGC 1559’s spiral arms.”