This image of the small galaxy NGC 178 comes courtesy of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).
This new image from Hubble shows the dwarf galaxy NGC 178. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.
NGC 178 is a dwarf galaxy, about 40,000 light-years across.
Otherwise known as LEDA 2349 and IC 39, NGC 178 lies approximately 64 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus.
Despite its diminutive size, the galaxy is busy forming new stars.
On average, it forms stars totaling around half the mass of the Sun per year — enough to label it a starburst galaxy.
The discovery of NGC 178 is an interesting, and somewhat confusing, story.
It was originally discovered by American astronomer Ormond Stone in 1885 and named NGC 178, but its position in the sky was recorded incorrectly — by accident the value for the galaxy’s right ascension was off by a considerable amount.
In the years that followed NGC 178 was spotted again, this time by French astronomer Stéphane Javelle.
As no catalogued object occupied that position in the sky, Javelle believed he had discovered a new galaxy and entered it into the expanded Index Catalogue under the name IC 39.
Later, American astronomer Herbert Howe also observed the object and corrected Stone’s initial mistake.
Many years later, astronomers finally noticed that NGC 178 and IC 39 were actually the same object.
This image of NGC 178 is made up of observations from Hubble’s WFPC2 instrument in the optical part of the spectrum.
Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths.
The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
