The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the unbarred spiral galaxy NGC 691.
This Hubble image shows NGC 691, a spiral galaxy located 125 million light-years away in the constellation Aries. The image is made up of observations from Hubble’s WFC3 instrument in the infrared and optical parts 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. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Riess et al.
NGC 691 lies approximately 125 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Aries.
Otherwise known as LEDA 6793, UGC 1305 and TC 448, this galaxy is about 130,000 light-years across.
It is the foremost member of the NGC 691 group, a gathering of five galaxies of varied shapes and colors.
NGC 691 was discovered by the German-born British astronomer William Herschel on November 13, 1786.
“NGC 691 was one of thousands of objects discovered by William Herschel during his prolific decades-long career spent hunting for, characterizing, and cataloguing a wide array of the galaxies and nebulae visible throughout the night sky — almost 200 years before the Hubble telescope was even launched,” the Hubble astronomers said.
“The intricate detail visible in this picture would likely be extraordinary to Herschel,” they noted.
“Hubble was able to capture an impressive level of structure within NGC 691’s layers of stars and spiraling arms — all courtesy of the telescope’s high-resolution Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).”
