Barred Eye

Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hub­ble Her­itage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Col­lab­o­ra­tion

Clus­ters of hot, blue stars swirl along the star lanes of barred spi­ral NGC 1672.

Explore this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope. Clouds of hydro­gen gas glow red along the outer arms of the galaxy. Cur­tains of dust, giv­ing a red tint to far-off back­ground galax­ies, give detail to the spi­ral arms. NGC 1672 is a bit dif­fer­ent than nor­mal spi­ral galax­ies. The spi­ral arms do not twist into the cen­ter but instead are attached at both ends by a bar of stars. We view NGC 1672 nearly face-on, look­ing down as if from above, from our van­tage point on Earth. Bright blue, young and hot stars are con­cen­trated at the ends of the bars. Astronomers believe that gas and dust has a unique way of fun­nel­ing from the outer spi­ral arms toward the cen­ter nucleus, cre­at­ing an intense star-making region within the bars.

NGC 1672, about 60 mil­lion light-years from Earth toward the south­ern con­stel­la­tion of Dorado the Dol­phin, also is a very active galaxy. Astronomers call galax­ies like this one a Seyfert galaxy. The energy put out by the nucleus of NGC 1672 is very high. Astronomers believe that a super­mas­sive black hole at the galaxy’s core is respon­si­ble for this huge out­put of light and energy.