Astronomers have released an absolutely beautiful photo taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of NGC 3597.
This Hubble image shows the young merging galaxy NGC 3597. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.
NGC 3597, also known as PGC 34266 and ESO 503-3, is a galaxy in the constellation Crater, approximately 147 million light-years away from us.
It was discovered by the British astronomer John Herschel on March 21, 1835.
According to scientists, NGC 3597 is the result of a recent merger between two near equal mass spiral galaxies, at least one of which contained a strong bulge.
The galaxy is fairly luminous at all wavelengths and is slowly evolving to become a massive elliptical galaxy.
Various properties of the galaxy starburst suggest that it occurred less than 10 million years ago and may have involved at least one early type spiral galaxy.
In 1999, more than 300 proto-globular star clusters were discovered in NGC 3597.
This image of NGC 3597 was made from separate exposures taken in the visible region of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) instrument.
Astronomer Judy Schmidt submitted a version of the image to the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition.
