The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the spiral galaxy NGC 24, which is found in the constellation of Sculptor.
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the spiral galaxy NGC 24. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.
NGC 24 is a magnitude 11.6 spiral galaxy, about 25 million light-years away.
Also known as LEDA 701 and ESO 472-16, the galaxy measures some 40,000 light-years across.
It was discovered on October 27, 1785 by the British astronomer William Herschel.
The new Hubble image shows NGC 24 in detail, highlighting the blue bursts (young stars), dark lanes (cosmic dust), and red bubbles (hydrogen gas) of material peppered throughout the galaxy’s spiral arms.
Numerous distant galaxies can also been seen hovering around NGC 24’s perimeter. However, there may be more to this picture than first meets the eye.
Astronomers suspect that spiral galaxies like NGC 24 are surrounded by, and contained within, extended haloes of dark matter.
Dark matter is a mysterious substance that cannot be seen; instead, it reveals itself via its gravitational interactions with surrounding material.
Its existence was originally proposed to explain why the outer parts of galaxies, including our own Milky Way Galaxy, rotate unexpectedly fast, but it is thought to also play an essential role in a galaxy’s formation and evolution.
Most of NGC 24’s mass – a whopping 80 % – is thought to be held within such a dark halo.
This color image of NGC 24 was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and near-infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).
It is based on data obtained through two filters: the broad V-band filter F606W and the infrared filter F814W.
The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
