Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2021 April 7

                             Threads of NGC 1947
    Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Rosario; Acknowledgment: L. Shatz

   Explanation: Found in far southern skies, deep within the boundaries of
   the constellation Dorado, NGC 1947 is some 40 million light-years away.
   In silhouette against starlight, obscuring lanes of cosmic dust thread
   across the peculiar galaxy's bright central regions. Unlike the
   rotation of stars, gas, and dust tracing the arms of spiral galaxies,
   the motions of dust and gas don't follow the motions of stars in NGC
   1947 though. Their more complicated disconnected motion suggest this
   galaxy's visible threads of dust and gas may have come from a donor
   galaxy, accreted by NGC 1947 during the last 3 billion years or so of
   the peculiar galaxy's evolution. With spiky foreground Milky Way stars
   and even more distant background galaxies scattered through the frame,
   this sharp Hubble image spans about 25,000 light-years near the center
   of NGC 1947.

                    Tomorrow's picture: Ginny's close-up
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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