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.

                                2020 April 6

                 NGC 1672: Barred Spiral Galaxy from Hubble
   Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA, ESA; Processing & Copyright:
                                Daniel Nobre

   Explanation: Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even
   our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar.
   Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672, featured here, was captured
   in spectacular detail in an image taken by the orbiting Hubble Space
   Telescope. Visible are dark filamentary dust lanes, young clusters of
   bright blue stars, red emission nebulas of glowing hydrogen gas, a long
   bright bar of stars across the center, and a bright active nucleus that
   likely houses a supermassive black hole. Light takes about 60 million
   years to reach us from NGC 1672, which spans about 75,000 light years
   across. NGC 1672, which appears toward the constellation of the
   Dolphinfish (Dorado), has been studied to find out how a spiral bar
   contributes to star formation in a galaxy's central regions.

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