The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has delivered an unrivalled snapshot of the lenticular galaxy NGC 2655.
This Hubble image shows the lenticular galaxy NGC 2655. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Fillipenko.
NGC 2655, also known as LEDA 25069, UGC 4637 and APG 225, was discovered on September 26, 1802 by German-born British astronomer William Herschel.
It is located approximately 66 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis.
NGC 2655 may not look much like a galaxy — it lacks the well-defined arms of a spiral galaxy, or the reddish bulge of an elliptical — but it is in fact something known as a lenticular galaxy.
Lenticular galaxies sit somewhere between the spiral and elliptical types; they are disc-shaped, like spirals, but they no longer form large numbers of new stars and thus contain only ageing populations of stars, like ellipticals.
NGC 2655’s core is extremely luminous, resulting in its additional classification as a Seyfert galaxy, a type of active galaxy with strong and characteristic emission lines.
This luminosity is thought to be produced as matter is dragged onto the accretion disc of a supermassive black hole sitting at the galaxy’s center.
The structure of NGC 2655’s outer disc, on the other hand, appears calmer, but it is oddly-shaped.
The complex dynamics of the gas in the galaxy suggest that it may have had a turbulent past, including mergers and interactions with other galaxies.
The color image of NGC 2655 was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and near-infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument.
It is based on data obtained through two filters: a 555 nm green filter (F555W) and an 814 nm infrared filter (F814W).
The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
