By NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center
May 23, 2022
Visible and infrared wavelengths of light dominate the image due to the fact that IC 4271 is a Type II Seyfert Galaxy. The colors in this image are mainly visible light, while the color violet represents ultraviolet light and red represents near-infrared light.
Hubble Space Telescope image of IC 4271, a pair of spiral galaxies located about 800 million light-years away. Credit: NASA, ESA, and B. Holwerda (University of Louisville Research Foundation, Inc.); Image processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America).
This brand-new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of IC 4271, likewise called Arp 40, reveals an unusual pair of spiral galaxies roughly 800 million light-years away. The smaller sized galaxy is superimposed on the larger one, which is a type of active galaxy called a Seyfert galaxy.
Seyfert galaxies are called after astronomer Carl K. Seyfert who, in 1943, released a paper about spiral galaxies with really intense emission lines. The bigger galaxy in this pair is a Type II Seyfert galaxy, which indicates it is a really brilliant source of infrared and noticeable radiation.
Information gathered throughout Hubble observations created to study the function of dust in shaping the energy distributions of low mass disk galaxies was utilized to create the image. The Hubble observations looked at six pairs of galaxies where one remained in front of the other. The broad variety of light that Hubbles Wide Field Camera 3 is sensitive to, in addition to its resolution, allowed the scientists to map the foreground galaxys dust disk in great information throughout ultra-violet, visible, and infrared light.
Seyfert galaxies are named after astronomer Carl K. Seyfert who, in 1943, published a paper about spiral galaxies with extremely brilliant emission lines. We now know that about 10% of all galaxies might be Seyfert galaxies. The bigger galaxy in this pair is a Type II Seyfert galaxy, which suggests it is a very brilliant source of visible and infrared radiation.