Hubble Telescope Image of the Week – A Spiral Disguised

Hubble Views NGC 1032

This is an image of NGC 1032 located about a hundred million light years away in the constellation Cetus (The Sea Monster). Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Resembling a wizard’s staff set aglow, NGC 1032 cleaves the quiet darkness of space in two in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

NGC 1032 is located about a hundred million light years away in the constellation Cetus (The Sea Monster). Although beautiful, this image perhaps does not do justice to the galaxy’s true aesthetic appeal: NGC 1032 is actually a spectacular spiral galaxy, but from Earth, the galaxy’s vast disc of gas, dust and stars is seen nearly edge-on.

A handful of other galaxies can be seen lurking in the background, scattered around the narrow stripe of NGC 1032. Many are oriented face-on or at tilted angles, showing off their glamorous spiral arms and bright cores. Such orientations provide a wealth of detail about the arms and their nuclei, but fully understanding a galaxy’s three-dimensional structure also requires an edge-on view. This gives astronomers an overall idea of how stars are distributed throughout the galaxy and allows them to measure the “height” of the disc and the bright star-studded core.

 

2 Comments on "Hubble Telescope Image of the Week – A Spiral Disguised"

  1. VALERIY POLULYAKH | May 14, 2018 at 8:46 am | Reply

    The main idea of the formation of celestial bodies was actually given by Sir Isaac Newton. Once upon a time, the world was filled with a homogeneous cloud of neutral hydrogen. If we look very far back in time, we will see how condensations appear in this cloud which, under the influence of gravitation, do not turn into a single huge mass, but transform into beautiful structured galaxies in which beautiful constellations appear by condensation. Unfortunately, this remarkable picture does not correspond to observations. We do not see gas clouds in which galactic structures gradually appear. There is no any gas reservoirs. The most distant observations demonstrate ready-made galaxies with all their structures and stellar populations. So, the new cosmogony only added dark matter and dark energy, which unfortunately are not observed.

  2. VALERIY POLULYAKH | May 15, 2018 at 8:03 am | Reply

    he main idea of the formation of celestial bodies was actually given by Sir Isaac Newton. Once upon a time, the world was filled with a homogeneous cloud of neutral hydrogen. If we look very far back in time, we will see how condensations appear in this cloud which, under the influence of gravitation, do not turn into a single huge mass, but transform into beautiful structured galaxies in which beautiful constellations appear by condensation. Unfortunately, this remarkable picture does not correspond to observations. We do not see gas clouds in which galactic structures gradually appear. There is no any gas reservoirs. The most distant observations demonstrate ready-made galaxies with all their structures and stellar populations. So, the new cosmogony only added dark matter and dark energy, which unfortunately are not observed. https://www.academia.edu/26879556/The_Galaxies_Where_Do_They_Come_From

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