Hubble just captured this ‘fluffy’ galaxy in all its flocculent glory

Thursday, July 9, 2020 - 05:30 in Astronomy & Space

Situated 67 million light-years away, NGC 2275 has a feathered, fluffy appearance. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)/)The Hubble Space Telescope just imaged a galaxy nestled 67 million light-years away in the Cancer constellation—and it’s fluffy. Known as NGC 2775, the galaxy has fuzzy arms spiraling out from its center like the limbs of a white dog, and it’s sprinkled with millions of young, scorching blue stars. While some galaxies have defined, sparkling arms called grand design spirals, the spirals of flocculent galaxies are still there—but they’re obscured by clouds of patchy gas, which create that snuggly dog fur effect. NGC 2775′s spirals of gas, which act as star production factories, have spread far out from the galaxy’s unusually massive center bulge. Earlier in the galaxy’s life, the bulge would’ve been filled with gas that long ago transformed into clusters of white-hot stars.  The...

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