Apr 8, 2009

Galaxies Rule All

This beautiful image of NGC 7049, found in the constellation Indus, appears to be somewhere between a spiral and an elliptical galaxy. (Click image to enlarge)



The globular clusters in NGC 7049 are seen as the sprinkling of small faint points of light in the galaxy’s halo. The halo – the ghostly region of diffuse light surrounding the galaxy – is composed of myriads of individual stars and provides a luminous background to the remarkable swirling ring of dust lanes surrounding NGC 7049's core. Globular clusters are very dense and compact groupings of a few hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by gravity. - ( Science Daily )

What appears to be a smoke/fuzz/glow is the light of millions upon millions of individual stars. Amazing!
This image was taken by one of the many cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope, specifically, the Advanced Camera for Surveys.

No comments: