This new image from the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showcases NGC 4424, a 12th magnitude barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation of Virgo, approximately 50 million light-years away.
This image shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 4424. To the left there are two bright objects in the frame: the brightest is another, smaller galaxy known as LEDA 213994, and the object closer to NGC 4424 is an anonymous star in our Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: ESA / Hubble / NASA / Gilles Chapdelaine.
NGC 4424, also known as UGC 7561, was discovered by German astronomer Heinrich Louis d’Arrest on February 27, 1865.
The galaxy belongs to the Virgo Cluster – a large group of galaxies centered about 54 million light-years from Earth – and is believed to be one of the clearest cases for a significant merger in the cluster.
It has a strongly disturbed stellar disk, with the banana-shaped stellar distribution and the shell-like stellar features.
In the new image NGC 4424 is seen more or less edge on, but from above you would be able to see the arms of the galaxy wrapping around its center to give the characteristic spiral form.
Along the central region of the galaxy, clouds of dust block the light from distant stars and create dark patches.
In 2012, a Type Ia supernova explosion, called SN 2012cg, was observed in the galaxy by astronomers from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search project.
According to scientists, NGC 4424 will consume most its remaining, surrounding gas during the next 3 billion years; outer stellar structures will fade in the next billion years.
The galaxy will end up as a lenticular galaxy, with smooth stellar disk, little gas and dust in the inner 6,500 light-years, and larger bulge or pseudo-bulge.
Amateur astronomer Gilles Chapdelaine submitted a version of the image to the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition.
