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Anne’s Picture of the Day: Galaxy NGC 2903
read more at Anne’s Astronomy News http://annesastronomynews.com/
January 16, 2013
NGC 2903, a bright spiral galaxy in Leo
Image Credit & Copyright: R. Jay GaBany (http://www.cosmotography.com)
NGC 2903 is a very bright barred spiral galaxy that spans about 80,000 light-years and lies around 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo, while moving away from us at approximately 556 kilometers per second. It is discovered by William Herschel on November 16, 1784. Strangely enough Charles Messier missed this galaxy when compiling his catalog.
NGC 2903 has a central bar with very young, hot globular clusters along it. Furthermore, the galaxy possesses massive blue spiral arms laced with dark dust lanes, immense gas and dust clouds, and an unusual mix of old and young star clusters, in contrast to the uniformly old globular clusters found in our Milky Way galaxy. However, its general size and central bar makes it quite similar to our Milky Way.
Star-forming regions with an exceptional rate of star formation activity are mostly distributed in a 2000 light-years wide ring around the galaxy’s center (one of which has its own NGC listing: NGC 2905). Astronomers hypothesize that the gravity of the central bar expedites star formation in this ring.
NGC 2903 is one of the brighter galaxies of the northern hemisphere and is visible with a small telescope.
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2013-01-16 05:21:08
Source: http://annesastronomynews.com/annes-picture-of-the-day-galaxy-ngc-2903/
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