Hubble Sees Galaxy on Edge

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Desktop available 1024x768Galaxy NGC 5866. Image credit: NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute

by Staff Writers
Baltimore MD (SPX) Jun 12, 2006
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this unique view of the disk galaxy NGC 5866 tilted nearly edge-on to Earth's line-of-sight. Hubble's sharp vision reveals a crisp dust lane dividing the galaxy into two halves.

The image highlights the galaxy's structure: a subtle, reddish bulge surrounding a bright nucleus, a blue disk of stars running parallel to the dust lane, and a transparent outer halo.

NGC 5866 is a disk galaxy of type S0 (pronounced s-zero). Viewed face on, it would look like a smooth, flat disk with little spiral structure. It remains in the spiral category because of the flatness of the main disk of stars as opposed to the more spherically rotund (or ellipsoidal) class of galaxies called ellipticals.

S0 galaxies, with disks like spirals and large bulges like ellipticals, are called lenticular galaxies. NGC 5866 lies in the Northern constellation Draco, at a distance of 44 million light-years. It has a diameter of roughly 60,000 light-years - only two-thirds the diameter of the Milky Way, although its mass is similar.

Hubble's image of NGC 5866 is a combination of blue, green and red observations taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys in February 2006.

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SPACE ART

Spitzer Spies Galactic Masquerade Party Of Two

Pasadena CA (SPX) Apr 27, 2006
Spitzer Space Telescope's latest image shows a pair of galaxies peering out as though through a mask of surrounding stars.

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