Hubble sees a galaxy curbing the trend



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Hubble sees a galaxy curbing the trend

This luminous orb is the NGC 4621 galaxy, better known as the Messier 59. As this last nickname indicates, the galaxy is listed in the famous catalog of deep-sky objects established by the comet hunter French Charles Messier in the eighteenth century. Credit: ESA / Hubble & NASA, P. Cote

This luminous orb is the NGC 4621 galaxy, better known as the Messier 59. As this last nickname indicates, the galaxy is listed in the famous catalog of deep-sky objects established by the comet hunter French Charles Messier in the eighteenth century. However, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Koehler would have discovered the galaxy just days before Messier added it to his collection in 1779.

Modern observations show that Messier 59 is an elliptical galaxy, one of the three main types of galaxies as well as spirals and irregulars. Ellipticals tend to be the most advanced of the trio, full of old red stars and with little or no new formation of stars. Messier 59, however, counteracts this trend somewhat; the galaxy shows signs of star formation, some newborn stars residing in a disk near the nucleus.

Messier 59 is located about 50 million light-years away in the galaxy cluster of the Virgin, 2,000 strong men, in the constellation of the Virgin (Virgo). This image was taken by the Advanced NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope Survey Camera.


Image: Hubble captures a cluttered cluster


Provided by
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center


Quote:
Image: Hubble sees a galaxy breaking the trend (May 31, 2019)
recovered on May 31, 2019
from https://phys.org/news/2019-05-image-hubble-galaxy-bucking-trend.html

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