The Hubble Space Telescope captured a new image of the star called NGC 7678, showing off its famous arm of bright and beefy stars and gas spinning up and down from the bottom of its bright heart.
Measuring approximately 115,000 light years in width, the NGC 7678 is similar in size to our own Milky Way galaxy, with two main arms that make up its spiral. Located in the constellation Pegasus, it is about 164 million light-years away from us here on Earth.
NGC 7678, pictured here in the new Hubble statue, was discovered in 1784 by the German-British astronaut William Herschel.
Image: ESA / Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.
The galaxy’s heavy arm comes from a greater density of stellar gas in the region. Magnetic fields can affect the shapes of spin diseases, and changes in the intensity and flow of these fields could alter the circulation of star-forming gases, although scientists are not entirely clear on all the properties. which goes into the formation of galaxies. The heavier arm apparently received more gas earlier in the galaxy’s life, allowing more stars to form.
NGC 7678 was first discovered in 1784 by William Herschel and entered the New General Catalog of nebulae and star collections by John Louis Emil Dreyer in 1888, where it receives the acronym in name. It is also known as Arp 28, as it is the 28th entry in Halton Arp’s Atlas of Galaxies Peculiar published in 1966.
While many telescopes have captured the NGC 7678 in features ranging from blurry to blurrier, this new image from Hubble is quite clear from the original black-and-white view. in the Atlas of Galaxies Peculiar, NGC 7678 is one of six spiral galaxies known for having one heavy arm.