The Hubble team has released a beautiful new image of the dwarf galaxy IC 776, which is found in the constellation of Virgo.
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This Hubble image shows IC 776, a dwarf galaxy around 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Sun.
IC 776 is located approximately 100 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Virgo.
Otherwise known as ALFALFA 3-210, LEDA 39613 or UGC 7352, this galaxy was discovered on May 4, 1893 by the French astronomer Stéphane Javelle.
IC 776 is a member of the Virgo Cluster, the closest and best-studied great cluster of galaxies.
While a dwarf galaxy, it’s also been classified as an SAB-type or ‘weakly barred’ spiral, one study naming it a ‘complex case’ in morphology.
“This highly detailed view from Hubble demonstrates that complexity well,” the Hubble astronomers said in a statement.
“IC 776 has a ragged, disturbed disk that nevertheless looks to spiral around the core, and arcs of star-forming regions.”
The color image of IC 776 was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and near-infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).
Two filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
“This image is from an observation program dedicated to the study of dwarf galaxies in the Virgo cluster, searching for sources of X-rays in such galaxies,” the researchers said.
“X-rays are often emitted by accretion disks, where material that is drawn into a compact object by gravity crashes together and forms a hot, glowing disk.”
“The compact object can be a white dwarf or neutron star in a binary pair, stealing material from its companion star, or it can be the supermassive black hole at the heart of a galaxy, devouring all around it.”
“Dwarf galaxies like IC 776, traveling through the Virgo cluster, experience a pressure from the intergalactic gas which can both stimulate star formation and feed the central black hole in a galaxy,” they added.
“That can create energetic accretion disks, hot enough to emit X-rays.”
“While Hubble is not able to see X-rays, it can coordinate with X-ray telescopes such as NASA’s Chandra, revealing the sources of this radiation in high resolution using visible light.”
“Dwarf galaxies are thought to be very important for our understanding of cosmology and the evolution of galaxies.”
“As with many areas of astronomy, the ability to examine these galaxies across the electromagnetic spectrum is critical to their study.”
