The Hubble Space Telescope is observing a pair of spiral galaxies known as IC 4271, located about 800 million light-years from Earth. (Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and B. Holverda (University of Louisville Research Foundation, Inc.); Image Processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard / Catholic University of America))
An unusual pair of galaxies revolves together in a mesmerizing new image 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 be superimposed, with the smaller galaxy in front of its larger satellite. The larger galaxy is classified as Seifert, an active core galaxy, according to a statement from NASA (opens in a new section), which released the image on May 20.
About 10% of all galaxies may be Seifert’s galaxies, named after astronomer Carl K. Seifert, who described these spiral galaxies with very bright emission lines as early as the 1940s, according to a NASA statement.
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An active galaxy is one that has a supermassive black hole at its center. This monstrous black hole attracts ambient gas and dust, and because the black hole consumes this material, it emits huge streams of radiation, feeding the active core observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. The larger of the two galaxies in IC 4271 is thought to be a Seyfert Type II galaxy, meaning it is a very bright source of infrared and visible light, according to a NASA statement.
“The active nuclei of Seifert’s galaxies are brightest when observed in light beyond the visible spectrum,” NASA officials said in a statement.
The last image of IC 4271 was taken with
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 smaller galaxy in the foreground of the image. The galaxy’s dust disk – which feeds its central black hole – has been mapped with fine detail in ultraviolet, visible and infrared light, according to the statement.
“Because IC 4271 is a Seyfert Type II galaxy, visible and infrared wavelengths dominate the image,” NASA officials said in a statement. “The colors in this image are mostly visible light, while violet is ultraviolet light and red is near infrared light.”
Hubble’s observations for IC 4271 were collected as part of a larger study to investigate the role of dust in shaping the energy distributions of low-mass disk galaxies. IC 4271 is one of the six pairs of galaxies observed by Hubble in which one galaxy was located in front of another.
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