A new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the dusty structure encircling the center of a distant galaxy known as NGC 2768.
This Hubble image shows the elliptical galaxy NGC 2768 (upper left). Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / S. Smartt, Queen’s University Belfast.
NGC 2768, also known as LEDA 25915 or SDSS J091137.39+600214.8, is a magnitude 9.90 elliptical galaxy.
The galaxy lies in the constellation Ursa Major, approximately 72 million light-years away.
NGC 2768 is also an example of a so-called Seyfert galaxy, a type of galaxy named for the American astronomer Karl Seyfert who first identified galaxies with emission lines superimposed on the normal radiation from their nuclei in 1943. Such galaxies are a subset of an ill-defined species known as active galaxies whose nuclei emit radio- and X-radiation as well as visible light.
The supermassive black hole at the center of NGC 2768 speeds up and sucks in gas from the nearby space, creating a stream of material swirling inwards towards the black hole known as an accretion disk.
A close-up view of NGC 2768. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / S. Smartt, Queen’s University Belfast.
The dust in NGC 2768 forms an intricate network of knots and filaments. In the center of the galaxy are two tiny, S-shaped symmetric jets.
These two flows of material travel outwards from the center of the galaxy along curved paths, and are masked by the tangle of dark dust lanes that spans the body of NGC 2768.
The color image of NGC 2768 was made from separate exposures taken in infrared and visible regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).
