The Hubble team has released a beautiful photo taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of half of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 6000.
This Hubble image shows NGC 6000, a barred spiral galaxy some 102 million light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Filippenko / M.H. Özsaraç.
NGC 6000 is located approximately 102 million light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius.
Otherwise known as ESO 450-20, IRAS 15467-2914 or LEDA 56145, this spiral galaxy is almost 67,000 light-years across.
It was discovered by the British astronomer John Herschel on May 8, 1834.
Also classified as Seyfert II galaxy, NGC 6000 is the brightest of all the galaxies in the constellation Scorpius.
“NGC 6000 has a glowing yellow center and glittering blue outskirts,” the Hubble astronomers said in a statement.
“The colors reflect differences in the average ages, masses and temperatures of the galaxy’s stars.”
“In the heart of the galaxy, the stars tend to be older and smaller.”
“Less massive stars are cooler than more massive stars, and somewhat counterintuitively, cooler stars are redder, while hotter stars are bluer.”
“Farther out along NGC 6000’s spiral arms, brilliant star clusters host young, massive stars that appear distinctly blue.”
Hubble’s instruments collected the data for the new image of NGC 6000 while surveying the sites of recent supernova explosions in nearby galaxies.
“NGC 6000 has hosted two recent supernovae: SN 2007ch in 2007 and SN 2010as in 2010,” the astronomers said.
“We were able to discern the faint glow of supernovae years after the initial explosion.”
“These observations help to constrain the masses of supernova progenitor stars and can indicate if they had any stellar companions.”
“By zooming in to the right side of the galaxy’s disk in this image, you may see something else yellow and blue: a set of four thin lines.”
“These are an asteroid in our Solar System, which was drifting across Hubble’s field of view as it gazed at NGC 6000.”
“The four streaks are due to different exposures that were recorded one after another with slight pauses in between. These were combined to create this final image.”
“The colors appear this way because each exposure used a filter to collect only very specific wavelengths of light, in this case around red and blue.”
“Having these separate exposures is important to study and compare stars by their colors — but it also makes asteroid interlopers very obvious.”
