The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stunning new image of NGC 613, a barred spiral galaxy.
This image snapped by Hubble reveals a detailed view of part of the disc of beautiful barred spiral galaxy NGC 613. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / S. Smartt, Queen’s University Belfast / Robert Gendler.
NGC 613, also known as ESO 413-11, LEDA 5849, VV 824, is a barred spiral galaxy located in the southern constellation Sculptor, approximately 85 million light-years away.
The galaxy was discovered by the English astronomer William Herschel in 1798, and then re-discovered by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop.
It was catalogued by the Danish-Irish astronomer John Louis Emil Dreyer in his famous ‘New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars,’ published in 1888.
NGC 613 is classified as a barred spiral for the bar-shaped band of stars and dust crossing its intensely glowing center. About 70% of spirals show a characteristic bar shape like NGC 613.
Its core looks bright and uniformly white in this Hubble image as a result of the combined light shining from the high concentration of stars packed into the core, but lurking at the center of this brilliance lies a ‘dark secret’ – a supermassive black hole.
Its mass is estimated at about 10 times that of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole and it is consuming stars, gas and dust.
Studies of NGC 613 in the radio wavelengths indicate that the nucleus is extremely active.
There is some evidence for an accelerated and collimated jet of gas being expelled from the center of the galaxy.
Amateur astronomer Robert Gendler submitted a version of this image to the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition.
