NASA has released a beautiful photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the spiral galaxy NGC 4423.
This Hubble image shows NGC 4423, a spiral galaxy some 55 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Sun.
NGC 4423 is located approximately 55 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo.
Also known as IRAS 12246+0609, LEDA 40801 or VCC 971, this spiral galaxy has a diameter of about 35,000 light-years.
First spotted by the German-born British astronomer William Herschel on April 13, 1784, NGC 4423 is a member of the Virgo Cluster.
“In the new image, NGC 4423 appears to have quite an irregular, tubular form, so it might be surprising to find out that it is in fact a spiral galaxy,” the Hubble astronomers said in a statement.
“Knowing this, we can make out the denser central bulge of the galaxy, and the less crowded surrounding disk — the part that comprises the spiral arms.”
“If NGC 4423 were viewed face-on it would resemble the shape that we most associate with spiral galaxies: the spectacular curving arms sweeping out from a bright center, interspersed with dimmer, darker, less populated regions.”
“But when observing the skies we are constrained by the relative alignments between Earth and the objects that we are observing: we cannot simply reposition Earth so that we can get a better face-on view of NGC 4423.”
“Of course, celestial objects do not remain sedentary in space, but often move at extremely rapid velocities relative to one another.”
“This might suggest that, should a galaxy be moving in a fortuitous direction relative to Earth, we might be able to view it from a substantially different perspective once it has moved far enough.”
“This is theoretically possible, but the reality is that the distances in space are simply far too big, and human lifetimes far too short, for a noticeable difference in relative alignment to occur.”
“In other words, this is more-or-less the view of NGC 4423 that we will always have.”
The new image of NGC 4423 is made up of observations from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in the near-infrared and optical parts of the spectrum.
It is based on data obtained through two filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
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