Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to capture striking new photos of LEDA 12535, a barred spiral galaxy located in the famous Perseus Cluster of galaxies.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows LEDA 12535, a barred spiral galaxy about 320 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus. The color composite was created from images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light. It is based on data obtained through three filters. The colors are obtained by assigning a different hue to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / I. Chilingarian.
LEDA12535 It is located about 320 million light years away in the constellation Perseus.
Also known as MCG+07-07-072 or SDSS J032041.39+424814.8, it is classified as a barred spiral galaxy.
“LEDA 12535 has a highly unusual shape for a spiral galaxy, with thin arms extending from the ends of its barred nucleus and tracing a nearly circular path around the disk,” the Hubble astronomers said.
“Using a common extension of Hubble's basis system, it is classified as an SBc(r) galaxy. The c indicates that the two spiral arms are loosely wound, each completing only a half revolution around the galaxy, and the (r) refers to the ring-like structure they produce.”
“Galactic rings come in a variety of shapes, from merely unusual to rare and astrophysically important.”
“Lenticular galaxies are a type of galaxy that lies intermediate between elliptical and spiral galaxies,” the astronomers added.
“Unlike elliptical galaxies, they feature large disks but lack spiral arms.”
“Lenticular means lens-shaped, and these galaxies often feature a ring-like shape in their disks.”
“The classification of ring galaxies, on the other hand, is only applied to unusual galaxies with a round ring of gas and star formation that closely resembles spiral arms but is either completely detached from the galactic core or lacks a visible core at all.”
“They are thought to have formed from the collision of galaxies.”
“Finally, there is the famous gravitational lensing, where the ring is actually a distorted image of a distant background galaxy, formed by the 'lensing' galaxy bending the light around it.”
“The ring-shaped images, called Einstein rings, can only form if the lensed galaxy and the photographed galaxy are perfectly aligned.”
Source: www.sci.news
