NGC 2090, featured in this latest Hubble Space Telescope image, is a key galaxy in recalibrating the Hubble constant.
Positioned 40 million light-years away, its unique spiral structure and ongoing star formation provide insights into galaxy evolution, enhanced by observations from the James Webb Space Telescope.
The spiral galaxy NGC 2090, located in the constellation Columba, takes center stage in this latest Hubble Space Telescope image.
NGC 2090 holds a significant place in astronomical research as part of Hubble’s Extragalactic Distance Scale Key Project. This groundbreaking effort aimed to refine the Hubble constant, a key value that describes the rate of expansion of the universe. NGC 2090 contributed to this project by helping calibrate the Tully-Fisher distance method through observations of Cepheid variable stars within the galaxy. In 1998, measurements based on these stars estimated the galaxy’s distance at 37 million light-years. A more recent measurement from 2020, also using the Tully-Fisher method, revised that distance to approximately 40 million light-years.
Before and since that project, NGC 2090 has been well-studied as a very prominent nearby example of star formation. It has been described as a flocculent spiral, meaning a spiral galaxy with a patchy, dusty disc and arms that are flaky or not visible at all. This Hubble image shows well why NGC 2090 earned that description, but its spiral arms do appear among the dust as winding lanes of light.
NGC 2090 is a galaxy still full of activity, with clusters of star formation at various stages of evolution spread across the disc. Examining star formation and the movement of matter in galaxies was the motivation for these Hubble observations, taken in October of this year. Likewise, Hubble’s partner in space astronomy, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, has also spied on this galaxy to add infrared data to this overall picture of galaxy evolution.
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