Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt
Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt
The soft glow in the picture above is NGC 2768, an elliptical galaxy
located in the northern constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear).
It appears here as a bright oval on the sky, surrounded by a wide,
fuzzy cloud of material. This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space
Telescope, shows the dusty structure encircling the centre of the
galaxy, forming a knotted ring around the galaxy’s brightly glowing
middle.
Interestingly, this ring lies perpendicular to the plane of NGC
2768 itself, stretching up and out of the galaxy.
The dust in NGC 2768 forms an intricate network of knots and
filaments. In the centre of the galaxy are two tiny, S-shaped symmetric
jets. These two flows of material travel outwards from the galactic
centre along curved paths, and are masked by the tangle of dark dust
lanes that spans the body of the galaxy.
These jets are a sign of a very active centre. NGC 2768 is an
example of a Seyfert galaxy, an object with a supermassive black hole
at its centre. This 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 disc. This disk throws off material in very
energetic outbursts, creating structures like the jets seen in the
image above.
A version of this image was entered into the Hubble's Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Judy Schmidt. One of her images, of newborn star XZ Tauri, was awarded third prize.
Source: ESA/Hubble Space Telescope
