esahubble_opo9916a May 6th, 1999
Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA/ESA)
Space Telescope Science Institute astronomers are giving the public chances to decide where to aim the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Guided by 8, 000 Internet voters, Hubble has already been used to take a close-up, multi-color picture of the most popular object from a list of candidates, the extraordinary 'polar-ring' galaxy NGC 4650A. Located about 130 million light-years away, NGC 4650A is one of only 100 known polar-ring galaxies. Their unusual disk-ring structure is not yet understood fully. One possibility is that polar rings are the remnants of colossal collisions between two galaxies sometime in the distant past, probably at least 1 billion years ago. What is left of one galaxy has become the rotating inner disk of old red stars in the center.
Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA
Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9916a/
Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
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