The Hubble space telescope stuns–and spooks–in its latest image of a pale ‘ghostly’ galaxy in the deep reaches of space. Captured with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys from over 44 million light-years away.
What NASA calls a “lenticular galaxy,” NGC 6684, lies in the constellation Pavo in the southern sky when viewed from Earth. It’s also one of four constellations collectively known as the Southern Birds.
Lenticular galaxies, like NGC 6684, are a type of galaxy that falls between two main classes: spiral and elliptical galaxies. They exhibit characteristics of both, making them a unique and intriguing class of celestial objects.
They can also be identified by their flattened, disk-like shapes, which resemble those of spiral galaxies. However, unlike spiral galaxies, lenticular galaxies lack prominent spiral arms. Instead, their central regions tend to be dominated by older stars with little to no star-forming activity, often creating featureless disks, which lend toward a “ghostly look,” notes NASA.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Tully
The new image was taken as part of NASA’s Every Known Nearby Galaxy survey, which aims to observe galaxies within 10 megaparsecs (32.6 million light-years) that the telescope has not seen already.
“Before this program began, Hubble had observed roughly 75% of these nearby galaxies. Completing this census will reveal insights into the stars making up a wide variety of galaxies, in a wide variety of environments,” NASA stated in the press release.
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Download the full-resolution image here.
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