Tightly wound, almost concentric,
arms of dark dust encircle the bright nucleus of
the galaxy NGC 2787 in this Hubble Space Telescope
image. In astronomer Edwin Hubble's galaxy classification
scheme, NGC 2787 is classified as an SB0, a barred
lenticular galaxy. These lens-shaped galaxies show
little or no evidence of the grand spiral arms that
occur in their more photogenic cousins, though NGC
2787 does sport a faint bar, not apparent in the
Hubble image, but visible in the ground-based image
below.
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Why
are astronomers studying this galaxy?
Astronomers are looking at the centers of
barred lenticular galaxies like NGC 2787 for
clues about the process of galaxy formation,
including the role of galaxy collisions and
central black holes.
Also visible in the Heritage image are about
a dozen globular clusters hovering around
NGC 2787. What appear to be stars are, in
fact, gravitationally bound families of hundreds
of thousands of ancient stars
orbiting the center of NGC 2787.
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Ground-based Image of NGC
2787
Copyright: Instituto de Astronomia, UNAM
More
about this image |
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