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Galaxy Tilted Edge-On to Line-of-Sight Thursday, January 07, 2010 - Anuradha Menon Home >> Picture Of The Day >> Space   
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| 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. | ||||||||||
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Some faint, wispy trails of dust can be seen meandering away from the disk of the galaxy out into the bulge and inner halo of the galaxy. The outer halo is dotted with numerous gravitationally bound clusters of nearly a million stars each, known as globular clusters. Background galaxies that are millions to billions of light-years farther away than NGC 5866 are also seen through the halo.One of the most outstanding features of NGC 5866 is the extended dust disk, which is seen exactly edge-on. This dust disk is highly unusual for a lenticular galaxy. The dust in most lenticular galaxies is generally found only near the nucleus and generally follows the light profile of the galaxies' bulges. (Source: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA) |
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