The Hubble Space Telescope observed a pair of spiral galaxies, known as IC 4271, located about 800 million light-years from Earth. (Image credit: NASA, ESA and B. Holwerda (University of Louisville Research Foundation, Inc.); Image processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard / Catholic University of America))
A quirky pair of galaxies collapses into a fascinating new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Located about 800 million light-years from Earth, the two spiral galaxies, known as IC 4271 or Arp 40, appear to overlap, with the smallest galaxy facing its largest companion. The largest galaxy is classified as a Seyfert galaxy, a type of galaxy with an active core, according to a NASA statement (opens a new tab), which released the image on May 20.
About 10 percent of all galaxies may be Seyfert galaxies, named after astronomer Carl K. Seyfert, who described these spiral galaxies with very bright emission lines in the 1940s, according to the statement. from NASA.
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An active galaxy is one that has a supermassive black hole in the center. This monster black hole attracts surrounding gas and dust, and as the black hole consumes this material, it releases large currents of radiation, feeding the active core observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. The larger of the two galaxies in IC 4271 is believed to be a type II Seyfert galaxy, meaning it is a very bright source of infrared and visible light, according to a NASA statement.
“The active nuclei of the Seyfert galaxies are brighter when observed in light outside the visible spectrum,” NASA officials wrote in the statement.
The recent image of IC 4271 was made using
Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, whose sensitivity and powerful resolution allowed researchers to get a detailed view of the galactic pair. This data was used to map the dust disk of the smallest galaxy, which is in the foreground of the image. According to the statement, the galaxy’s dust disk, which feeds its central black hole, was mapped in great detail through ultraviolet, visible and infrared light.
“Because IC 4271 is a type II Seyfert galaxy, the wavelengths of visible and infrared light dominate the image,” NASA officials wrote in the statement. “The colors in this image are mostly visible light, while violet represents ultraviolet light and red represents near-infrared light.”
Hubble’s observations of IC 4271 were collected as part of a larger study to investigate the role of dust in shaping the power distributions of low-mass disk galaxies. IC 4271 is one of six pairs of galaxies observed by Hubble in which one galaxy was facing each other.
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