Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
On a clear evening in April of 1789, the renowned astronomer William Herschel
continued his unrelenting survey of the night sky, hunting for new
cosmic objects — and found cause to celebrate! Lengthening his impressive list of cosmic discoveries yet again, the astronomer spotted this bright spiral galaxy, named NGC 4707, lurking in the constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dog). NGC 4707 lies roughly 22 million light-years from Earth.
Over
two centuries later, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is able to
view the same galaxy in far greater detail than Herschel could, allowing
us to appreciate the intricacies and characteristics of NGC 4707 as
never before. This striking image comprises observations from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), one of a handful of high-resolution instruments currently aboard the space telescope.
Herschel himself reportedly described NGC 4707 as a “small, stellar” galaxy; while it is classified as a spiral (type Sm), its overall shape, centre, and spiral arms are very loose and undefined, and its central bulge
is either very small or non-existent. It instead appears as a rough
sprinkling of stars and bright flashes of blue on a dark canvas, as if a
pointillist painter had dotted the cosmos with small pinpricks of bright paint.
The
blue smudges seen across the frame highlight regions of recent or
ongoing star formation, with newborn stars glowing in bright, intense
shades of cyan and turquoise.
Source: ESA/Hubble/Images
