Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured a stunning new image of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1559.
This Hubble image shows NGC 1559, a barred spiral galaxy some 32 million light-years away in the constellation of Reticulum. Image credit: Hubble / ESA / NASA / F. Belfiore / W. Yuan / J. Lee / PHANGS-HST Team / A. Riess / K. Takáts / D. de Martin & M. Zamani, ESA / Hubble.
NGC 1559 is located approximately 32 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Reticulum.
Otherwise known as ESO 84-10, IRAS 04170-6253 or LEDA 14814, this galaxy was discovered by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop on November 6, 1826.
NGC 1559 has massive spiral arms chock-full of star formation, and is receding from us at a speed of about 1,300 km/s.
It contains a mass of around 10 billion solar masses — while this may sound like a lot, that is almost 100 times less massive than our Milky Way Galaxy.
Although NGC 1559 appears to sit near the Large Magellanic Cloud, this is just a trick of perspective.
In reality, the galaxy is physically nowhere near the Large Magellanic Cloud in space — in fact, it truly is a loner, lacking the company of any nearby galaxies or membership of any galaxy cluster.
This new image of NGC 1559 is made up of observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the ultraviolet, infrared, and optical parts of the spectrum.
It is based on data obtained through ten filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
“The image spans Hubble’s sensitivity to light, from ultraviolet around 275 nanometers (nm) through blue, green and red to near-infrared at 1,600 nm,” the Hubble astronomers said in a statement.
“This allows information about many different astrophysical processes in the galaxy to be recorded: a notable example is the red 656-nm filter used here.”
“Hydrogen atoms which get ionised can emit light at this particular wavelength, called H-alpha emission,” they explained.
“New stars forming in a molecular cloud, made mostly of hydrogen gas, emit copious amounts of ultraviolet light which is absorbed by the cloud, but which ionises it and causes it to glow with this H-alpha light.”
“Therefore, filtering to detect only this light provides a reliable means to detect areas of star formation (called HII regions), shown in this image by the bright red and pink colours of the blossoming patches filling NGC 1559’s spiral arms.”