Polar Ring “t”

The Hub­ble Her­itage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)

An extra­or­di­nary polar ring “t” shows the bizarre vari­ety of inter­act­ing galax­ies in this NASA Hub­ble Space Tele­scope image of NGC 4650A.

Explore the image of NGC 4650A. From the bright galac­tic core, fol­low the ring of gas, dust and stars that sur­round the bright galaxy at a right angle. The cen­tral galaxy has a smooth reddish-yellow glow. with lit­tle dust. Astronomers think this is an older galaxy. Dark dust lanes are promi­nent in the cen­ter disk of the galaxy that make the upright bar of the our “t.” At the fringes of this galaxy, span­ning about 60,000 light-years, we can find blue clumps of new stars. This galaxy clearly has no cen­tral core, no spi­ral struc­ture and the edges are warped. Astronomers believe that this galac­tic inter­ac­tion began more than a bil­lion years ago when two galax­ies col­lided. That col­li­sion resulted in the bright galaxy at the cen­ter. Later, another smaller galaxy ven­tured too close to the larger galaxy. Stars, gas and dust were stripped off to form the new ring. Astronomers call this kind of galaxy a ‘polar-ring galaxy.’ Only 100 are known to exist.

NGC 4650A is located about 130 mil­lion light-years away toward the con­stel­la­tion of Cen­tau­rus, the Cen­taur.