A young elliptical

Esahubble_potw1546a_1024

esahubble_potw1546a November 16th, 2015

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)

At the centre of this amazing image is the elliptical galaxy NGC 3610. Surrounding the galaxy are a wealth of other galaxies of all shapes. There are spiral galaxies, galaxies with a bar in their central regions, distorted galaxies and elliptical galaxies, all visible in the background. In fact, almost every bright dot in this image is a galaxy the few foreground stars are clearly distinguishable due to the diffraction spikes that overlay their images. NGC 3610 is of course the most prominent object in this image and a very interesting one at that! Discovered in 1793 by William Herschel, it was later found that this elliptical galaxy contains a disc. This is very unusual, as discs are one of the main distinguishing features of a spiral galaxy. And NGC 3610 even hosts a memarkable bright disc. The reason for the peculiar shape of NGC 3610 stems from its formation history. When galaxies form, they usually resemble our galaxy, the Milky Way, with flat discs and spiral arms where star formation rates are high and which are therefore very bright. An elliptical galaxy is a much more disordered object which results from the merging of two or more disc galaxies. During these violent mergers most of the internal structure of the original galaxies is destroyed. The fact that NGC 3610 still shows some structure in the form of a bright disc implies that it formed only a short time ago. The galaxys age has been put at around four billion years and it is an important object for studying the early stages of evolution in elliptical galaxies.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1546a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
NGC 3610
Subject - Local Universe
Galaxy > Type > Elliptical
Galaxy > Component > Disk
Esahubble_potw1546a_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 11h 18m 25.1s
DEC = 58° 47’ 10.4”
Orientation
North is 3.3° CCW
Field of View
2.6 x 2.6 arcminutes
Constellation
Ursa Major
Esahubble_potw1546a_1280
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ID
potw1546a
Subject Category
C.5.1.4   C.5.4.3  
Subject Name
NGC 3610
Credits
ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)
Release Date
2015-11-16T06:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1546a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Simbad
Facility
Instrument
Color Assignment
Band
Bandpass
Central Wavelength
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
169.604763918, 58.7862331481
Reference Dimension
3112.0, 3112.0
Reference Pixel
1556.0, 1556.0
Scale
-1.38885683738e-05, 1.38885683738e-05
Rotation
3.3199999999999976
Coordinate System Projection:
TAN
Quality
Full
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
potw1546a
Metadata Date
2015-06-30T09:03:35+02:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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