NASA has released a stunning image snapped by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the central region of the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 1589.
This image, taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the central part of the spiral galaxy NGC 1589. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.
NGC 1589 is located approximately 168 million light-years away in the constellation of Taurus.
Otherwise known as LEDA 15342, UGC 3065 and SDSS J043045.45+005149.2, the galaxy has a diameter of about 160,000 light-years.
NGC 1589 was discovered by the German-born British astronomer William Herschel on December 19, 1783.
“NGC 1589 was once the scene of a violent bout of cosmic hunger pangs,” the Hubble astronomers said.
“As astronomers looked on, a poor, hapless star was torn apart and devoured by the ravenous supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.”
“We are now using Hubble to test this interpretation,” they added.
“Hubble observed such events before so we are confident that the space telescope will be able to provide smoking gun evidence in the form of stellar debris that was ejected during the disruption event.”
The new image of NGC 1589 was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument.
The color image was made through three filters.
The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
