Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA, ESA; Processing & Copyright: Daniel Nobre
Explanation:
Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers.
Even our own
Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a
modest central bar.
Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672,
featured here,
was captured in spectacular detail in an image taken by the orbiting
Hubble Space Telescope.
Visible are dark filamentary
dust lanes, young
clusters of bright blue stars, red
emission nebulas of glowing hydrogen gas,
a long bright bar of
stars across the center, and a bright
active nucleus
that likely houses a supermassive
black hole.
Light takes about 60 million years to reach us from
NGC 1672,
which spans about 75,000
light years across.
NGC 1672,
which appears toward the constellation of the Dolphinfish
(Dorado), has
been studied to find out how a spiral bar
contributes to star formation in a galaxy's central regions.
