This amazing image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals the tracking arms of NGC 2276, a spiral nebula 120 million light-years away in the constellation of Cepheus. At very first look, the fragile tracery of brilliant spiral arms and dark dust lanes looks like many other spiral nebula. A closer appearance exposes an oddly uneven galaxy formed by gravitational interaction and extreme star development. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Paul Sell (University of Florida), Acknowledgement: L. Shatz
The stunning spiral nebula NGC 2276 looks a bit uneven in this Hubble Space Telescope picture. An intense center of older yellow-colored stars generally lies straight in the center of a lot of spiral nebula. But the bulge in NGC 2276 looks balanced out to the upper left.
What’s going on?
In truth, a surrounding galaxy to the right of NGC 2276 (NGC 2300, not seen here) is gravitationally pulling on its disk of blue stars, pulling the stars on one side of the galaxy external to misshape the galaxy’s regular fried-egg look.
This sort of “tug-of-war” in between galaxies that pass close adequate to feel each other’s gravitational pull is not unusual in deep space. But, like snowflakes, no 2 close encounters look precisely alike.
In addition, newborn and short-term huge stars form a brilliant, blue arm along the upper left edge of NGC 2276. They trace out a lane of extreme star development. This might have been set off by a previous crash with a dwarf galaxy. It might likewise be because of NGC 2276 raking into the superheated gas that lies amongst galaxies in galaxy clusters. This would compress the gas to speed up into stars, and activate a firestorm of starbirth.
The spiral nebula lies 120 million light-years away, in the northern constellation Cepheus.
