Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured a striking photo of the lenticular galaxy NGC 1947.
This Hubble image shows NGC 1947, a lenticular galaxy located some 40 million light-years away in the constellation Dorado. The color image of NGC 1947 was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Two filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / D. Rosario / L. Shatz.
NGC 1947 resides approximately 40 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Dorado.
Otherwise known as ESO 85-87 and LEDA 17296, the galaxy was discovered by the Scottish-born astronomer James Dunlop on November 5, 1826.
It is a member of the NGC 1947 group of galaxies, which also includes spiral galaxies NGC 1892 and NGC 2082.
NGC 1947 has an extended dust lane, which crosses the galaxy’s center, and three parallel minor axis dust lanes, which appear as concentric rings.
The main dust lane crosses the galaxy’s center along the south-west direction, while the others, less pronounced and parallel to the central one, are detected in the north-east side.
NGC 1947 also has a ring of molecular gas and a disk-like distribution of ionized gas centered on the galaxy’s nucleus.
Moreover, the stars in NGC 1947 rotate along the galaxy’s major axis, perpendicular to the gas rotation axis.
“NGC 1947 shows off its structure by backlighting its remaining faint gas and dust disk with millions of stars,” Hubble astronomers said.
“In this picture, the faint remnants of the galaxy’s spiral arms can still be made out in the stretched thin threads of dark gas encircling it.”
“Without most of its star-forming material, it is unlikely that many new stars will be born within NGC 1947, leaving this galaxy to continue fading with time.”
