April 3, 2007 — A dazzling new image of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, is offering astronomers a detailed view of the galaxy's star-forming clouds and thick pockets of interstellar dust.
The galaxy holds several regions of active star formation, including several so-called starburst regions near the ends of the galaxy's reach.
Barred spiral galaxies like NGC 1672 differ from other spiral galaxies in that their arms don't reach all the way into the center of the galaxy. Instead, the arms are attached to the two ends of a "bar" of stars enclosing the heart of the galaxy, known as the nucleus.
The new Hubble image, which shows NGC 1672 on its face, bolsters a longstanding theory that barred galaxies somehow traffic gas from the disk inward toward the nucleus, according to a NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) press release.
That streaming of matter allows new stars to be born in the bar portion of the galaxy. Since the bars appear to be short-lived, astronomers are now investigating whether other, non-barred galaxies eventually develop a bar, or whether they have already been home to one in the past.
Beyond its informative value, the new image is poised to join the ranks of Hubble's greatest visual hits. Clusters of young blue stars glow along its four spiral arms, surrounded by glowing red clouds of hydrogen gas.
NGC 1672 is part of the family of Seyfert galaxies, named after the astronomer Carl Keenan Seyfert, who studied the region's star-forming properties in the 1940s, according to NASA.
The new image was captured by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in August, 2005.
