NGC6902 - Potw2106a
Discovered in the year 1836 by John Herschel, NGC 6902 is a beautiful spiral galaxy located more than 130 million light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius, the Archer. This image was taken with MUSE, the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument attached to one of the four 8.2-metre telescopes that make up the VLT, and shows the galaxy from a unique perspective. A zoom in towards the galaxy’s centre, the image shows a nuclear ring where the orange glow of intense star formation is visible.
Inside this ring lies a faint and small bar of stars. Researchers found that stars within it are distributed differently depending on their age, with younger stars aligned along the bar and older stars more dispersed. These locations of the young and old stars within the central bar of NGC 6902 confirm predictions made years earlier from simulations and models. This is the first time these predictions of galactic structure were confirmed with observations thanks to the incredible spatial resolution of the MUSE instrument.
Credit:
ESO/TIMER survey
Coordinates Position (RA): 20 24 28.17 Position (Dec): -43° 39' 13.25" Field of view: 1.06 x 1.09 arcminutes Orientation: North is 0.1° right of vertical
Colours & filters Band Telescope Optical B 438 nm Very Large Telescope MUSE Optical g 475 nm Very Large Telescope MUSE Optical r 625 nm Very Large Telescope MUSE Optical H-alpha 656 nm Very Large Telescope MUSE Optical N II 658 nm Very Large Telescope MUSE.
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NGC 6902NGC 6902 = IC 4948 ist eine Balken-Spiralgalaxie mit aktivem Galaxienkern vom Hubble-Typ SBa im Sternbild Schütze auf der Ekliptik. Sie ist schätzungsweise 125 Millionen Lichtjahre von der Milchstraße entfernt und hat einen Durchmesser von etwa 210.000 Lichtjahren. .. weiterlesen