From all the fabulous insights that our Universe has to offer us, the most incredible one we know about is right here on Earth. It’s the mere existence of us human beings. Judging by the insane number of galaxies and stars in the Universe, there could be creatures far smarter and more evolved than us.
Before astronomers ever begin to search for intelligent life elsewhere in the Cosmos, they have to locate the ‘big stuff’. That’s precisely what the Hubble telescope operated by NASA and ESA has done, as it recently captured a rare image of a beautiful galaxy.
The spiral galaxy NGC 2775 enters the scene
Behold another miracle of nature:
Image credit: Hubble / NASA / ESA / J. Lee / PHANGS-HST Team / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.
The NGC 2775 galaxy is located 67 million light-years away from Earth in the northern constellation of Cancer. The galaxy is also known as LEDA 25861 or UGC 4820, and it has a diameter of 80,000 light-years, which means about 20,000 light-years less than the Milky Way. NGC 2775 is considered a flocculent spiral galaxy.
Official statements regarding the discovery say as following:
NGC 2775’s ‘flocculent’ spiral arms indicate that the recent history of star formation of the galaxy has been relatively quiet,
There is virtually no star formation in the central part of the galaxy, which is dominated by an unusually large and relatively empty galactic bulge, where all the gas was converted into stars long ago.
The galaxy is a member of a small galactic group called the NGC 2775 group, and it belongs to the Antilia-Hydra Cloud of galaxies. NGC 2775 was first discovered in 1783 by the astronomer William Herschel. At that time, scientists didn’t know that they were dealing with another galaxy. It wasn’t until the ’20s when astronomers knew for sure that there are many other galaxies in the Universe besides our own. The American Edwin Hubble was the lucky astronomer to make the revolutionary discovery.
