Hubble Telescope Spies on NGC 6684 – Take a Look!
A ghost like a nebulous galaxy
Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope captured the lens-shaped galaxy NGC 6684. Imaged by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, this galaxy is about 44 million light-years from Earth. It is located in the constellation Pavo, which means “peacock” in Latin. Pavo is a group of stars in the southern sky and is one of the four constellations called the Southern Birds.
According to the NASA report, lenticular galaxies like NGC 6684 have a large flat part but do not have distinct curved arms like the Andromeda galaxy. This makes them sort of in between round galaxies and arcuate galaxies and gives them a hazy, dim appearance. NGC 6684 does not have the dark dusty streaks that run through other galaxies, making it appear even more ghostly.
The image data was collected as part of a large survey called “Every Known Nearby Galaxy”. The goal is to study all galaxies within a radius of 10 megaparsecs (or about 32.6 million light years) that the telescope has not yet looked at. Hubble had already inspected about 75% of these galaxies before this project began. Taking this survey will help us learn more about the stars in different galaxies and where they live.
Which Hubble Space Telescope captured NGC 6684 before?
As we reported earlier, the European Space Agency shared a mesmerizing image of a galaxy called NGC 6822, before NGC 6684. This galaxy is the closest to our Milky Way. The image was taken with the special cameras of the James Webb Space Telescope. Although NGC 6822 is very far away, about 1.5 million light-years away, we can see some details in the image.
Scientists can learn how stars grow and how dust in space works by studying galaxies like this one. It helps us understand what the universe was like when it was very young.
