NGC 7640 - HST - Potw1706a
A spiral in Andromeda
Not to be confused with our neighbouring Andromeda Galaxy, the Andromeda constellation is one of the 88 modern constellations. More importantly for this image, it is home to the pictured NGC 7640.
Many different classifications are used to identify galaxies by shape and structure — NGC 7640 is a barred spiral type. These are recognisable by their spiral arms, which fan out not from a circular core, but from an elongated bar cutting through the galaxy’s centre. Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is also a barred spiral galaxy. NGC 7640 might not look much like a spiral in this image, but this is due to the orientation of the galaxy with respect to Earth — or to Hubble, which acted as photographer in this case! We often do not see galaxies face on, which can make features such as spiral arms less obvious. There is evidence that NGC 7640 has experienced some kind of interaction in its past. Galaxies contain vast amounts of mass, and therefore affect one another via gravity. Sometimes these interactions can be mild, and sometimes hugely dramatic, with two or more colliding and merging into a new, bigger galaxy. Understanding the history of a galaxy, and what interactions it has experienced, helps astronomers to improve their understanding of how galaxies — and the stars within them — form.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Coordinates Position (RA): 23 22 7.32 Position (Dec): 40° 50' 57.87" Field of view: 3.32 x 3.34 arcminutes Orientation: North is 158.5° left of vertical Colours & filters Band Wavelength Telescope Optical V 606 nm Hubble Space Telescope ACS Optical I 814 nm Hubble Space Telescope ACS.
![]() ![]() |
ESA/Hubble images, videos and web texts are released by the ESA under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided they are clearly and visibly credited. Detailed conditions are below; see the ESA copyright statement for full information. For images created by NASA or on the hubblesite.org website, or for ESA/Hubble images on the esahubble.org site before 2009, use the {{PD-Hubble}} tag.
Conditions:
Notes:
|
- Dieses Werk darf von dir
- verbreitet werden – vervielfältigt, verbreitet und öffentlich zugänglich gemacht werden
- neu zusammengestellt werden – abgewandelt und bearbeitet werden
- Zu den folgenden Bedingungen:
- Namensnennung – Du musst angemessene Urheber- und Rechteangaben machen, einen Link zur Lizenz beifügen und angeben, ob Änderungen vorgenommen wurden. Diese Angaben dürfen in jeder angemessenen Art und Weise gemacht werden, allerdings nicht so, dass der Eindruck entsteht, der Lizenzgeber unterstütze gerade dich oder deine Nutzung besonders.
Relevante Artikel
NGC 7640NGC 7640 ist eine Balken-Spiralgalaxie mit ausgedehnten Sternentstehungsgebieten vom Hubble-Typ SBc im Sternbild Andromeda am Nordsternhimmel. Neuere Beobachtungen deuten darauf hin, dass die vermehrte Sternentstehung auf Absorption von Materie nach einer Kollision mit einer kleineren Galaxie herrührt. .. weiterlesen