This bright bar of light captured by the Hubble Space Telescope is the beautiful central bar of NGC 2217, a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Canis Major. Image Credit: ESA / Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Acknowledgments: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)
The beautiful central bar of NGC 2217 (also known as AM 0619-271) shines brightly in the constellation Canis Major (The Greater Dog), in this new image taken by the NASA/WHICH Hubble Space Telescope. About 65 million light-years from Earth, this barred spiral galaxy is the same size as ours Milky Way with a diameter of 100 thousand light years. Many stars are concentrated in the central region, forming the luminous beam, surrounded by a series of tightly wound spiral arms.
The central bar in these types of galaxies plays an important role in their evolution, helping to direct gas from the disk to the center of the galaxy. The transported gas and dust are then formed into new stars or carried to the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy. Weighing from a few hundred to over a billion times the mass of our Sun, supermassive black holes are present in nearly all major galaxies.
This image is colored with data from the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS).
Canis Major chart. Credit: IAU and Sky & Telescope magazine (Roger Sinnott & Rick Fienberg) CC BY 3.0