APOD: The Unusual Dusty Galaxy NGC 7049

      
                                               Image Credit: NASA, ESA and W. Harris (McMaster University)
NGC 7049 is about 100 million light-years away from Earth. NGC 7049 is a giant galaxy that spans around 150 000 light-years. NGC 7049 lies in the southern constellation of Indus. As you can see in the picture its appearance is unusual and this because of projecting rope-like dust ring. This is may be the cause of its brightness. Its structure might have risen from some recent galaxy collisions. NGC 7049 is more likely the “brightest” galaxy among the Indus Triplet of galaxies. In young galaxies this dust ring is mostly common. This dust region is a home of newly born stars. Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope took this magnificent picture of NGC 7049. Bright Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) are among one of the most massive galaxies. Bright Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) are also the oldest ones.



Globular clusters are very compact and dense alignments of some hundreds of thousands of stars destined together by gravity. Some of the first stars to be formed in a galaxy can be observed in Globular clusters. NGC 7049 contains rich groups of Globular clusters. This help astronomers to understand how the neighboring environment influenced the creation of galaxy Halo in the early Universe. If you look closely at above picture of NGC 7049, you will find a bright star on the top. This bright star is a separate star which lies in our own Galaxy. There is an unusual central ring of gas spinning out of the plane near the center of the galaxy, which is invisible in the above picture of NGC 7049.


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