Ribbons and pearls NGC 1398
Rather than beginning at the very middle of the galaxy and swirling outwards, NGC 1398’s graceful spiral arms stem from a straight bar, formed of stars, that cuts through the galaxy’s central region. Most spiral galaxies — around two thirds — are observed to have this feature, but it’s not yet clear whether or how these bars affect a galaxy’s behaviour and development.
This image comprises data gathered by the FOcal Reducer/low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument, mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal Observatory, Chile. It shows NGC 1398 in striking detail, from the dark lanes of dust mottling its spiral arms, through to the pink-hued star-forming regions sprinkled throughout its outer regions.
This image was created as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems programme, an outreach initiative to produce images of interesting, intriguing or visually attractive objects using ESO telescopes, for the purposes of education and public outreach. The programme makes use of telescope time that cannot be used for science observations. All data collected may also be suitable for scientific purposes, and are made available to astronomers through ESO’s science archive.
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NGC 1398NGC 1398 ist eine Balken-Spiralgalaxie mit aktivem Galaxienkern vom Hubble-Typ SBab im Sternbild Fornax am Südsternhimmel. Sie ist rund 65 Millionen Lichtjahre von der Milchstraße entfernt und hat einen Durchmesser von etwa 130.000 Lichtjahren. NGC 1398 ist Mitglied des Eridanus-Galaxienhaufens. Im selben Himmelsareal befindet sich u. a. die Galaxie NGC 1412. .. weiterlesen