NASA Hubble Catches a Spiral in the Air Pump
by Rose Santuci-Sofranko
Title
NASA Hubble Catches a Spiral in the Air Pump
Artist
Rose Santuci-Sofranko
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
Lying more than 110 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Antlia (The Air Pump) is the spiral galaxy IC 2560, shown here in an image from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. At this distance it is a relatively nearby spiral galaxy, and is part of the Antlia cluster — a group of over 200 galaxies held together by gravity. This cluster is unusual; unlike most other galaxy clusters, it appears to have no dominant galaxy within it. In this image, it is easy to spot IC 2560's spiral arms and barred structure. This spiral is what astronomers call a Seyfert-2 galaxy, a kind of spiral galaxy characterized by an extremely bright nucleus and very strong emission lines from certain elements — hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and oxygen. The bright center of the galaxy is thought to be caused by the ejection of huge amounts of super-hot gas from the region around a central black hole. There is a story behind the naming of this quirky constellation — Antlia was originally named antlia pneumatica by French astronomer Abbé Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, in honor of the invention of the air pump in the 17th century.
Credit: Hubble/European Space Agency and NASA
This photo was taken by NASA and is in the public domain. For more information see www.Nasa.gov The Fine Art America watermark in the lower right hand corner will not be on your finished product.
Uploaded
November 6th, 2013
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