In this new image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope focuses its lens on the center of spiral galaxy NGC 3430.
This Hubble image shows NGC 3430, a spiral galaxy about 100 million light-years away in the constellation Cygnus Minor. The color image was created from separate exposures taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in the visible and near-infrared spectral regions. The image is based on data acquired through two filters. Color is produced by assigning a different hue to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image courtesy of NASA / ESA / Hubble / C. Kilpatrick.
NGC 3430 It is located about 100 million light years away in the constellation Cygnus Minor.
Also known as IC 2613, LEDA 32614 and UGC 5982, the galaxy has a diameter of about 85,000 light-years.
NGC 3430 First discovered It was discovered on December 7, 1785 by German-born British astronomer William Herschel.
“Several other galaxies lie relatively close to this one, just outside the frame,” the Hubble astronomers said.
“One of them is close enough that gravitational interactions could drive star formation in NGC 3430.”
“NGC 3430 is such an excellent example of a galactic spiral that it may be the reason it became part of the sample Edwin Hubble used to define the classification of galaxies.”
“The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was named after him in 1926. Wrote the paper The project classifies about 400 galaxies according to their appearance: spiral, barred spiral, lenticular, elliptical, and irregular.”
“This easy-to-understand typology was highly influential, and the modern, more detailed systems used by astronomers today are still based on it.”
“NGC 3430 itself is a SAc galaxy, i.e. a spiral galaxy with no central bar and open, well-defined arms,” ​​the researchers added.
“At the time Hubble’s paper was published, the study of galaxies themselves was still in its infancy.”
“Thanks to Henrietta Levitt’s work on Cepheid variables, Hubble had only two years earlier settled the debate over whether these ‘nebulae’, as they were then called, were located within our galaxy or whether they were distant, separate stars.”
“He himself refers to an ‘extragalactic nebula’ in his paper, suggesting that it is outside the Milky Way galaxy.”
“Once it became clear that these distant objects were very different from real nebulae, the highly poetic term ‘island universe’ became popular for a time.”
“NGC 3430 may still seem worthy of this moniker, but today we refer to it and objects like it simply as a galaxy.”
Source: www.sci.news
