A Hubble Study of the Peculiar Asymmetry of NGC 949

This image provides the clearest ever view of galaxy NGC 949, which lies over 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Triangulum. The galaxy has an unusual shape, made more obscure due to its inclination. From our point of view, it is difficult to discern exactly what type of galaxy NGC 949 is, but it is certainly a disk galaxy of some kind, most likely a spiral. NGC 949 was first discovered by Sir William Herschel on September 21, 1786, using an 18.7-inch reflecting telescope. The galaxy was one of about 3,000 objects Herschel cataloged as "nebulae" during an intense and systematic deep sky survey, the results of which eventually formed the bulk of the New General Catalogue (NGC). Taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), this image shows extraordinary detail. This detail allows us to see a strange asymmetric alignment in the dark lanes of dust that snake across the galaxy. The top-right half of the galaxy appears considerably more marbled with dust in this image; a curious observation explained by stars tending to favor locations towards the center of a galaxy, and dust preferring almost invariably to reside along the galactic plane. When a gala

Date

2017-12-08

Collection

GSFC

Archive

NASA Image and Video Library

Type

photograph

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