File:Hubble Catches a Spiral in the Air Pump (9684625829).jpg

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Lying more than 110 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Antlia (The Air Pump) is the spiral galaxy IC 2560, shown here in an image from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. At this distance it is a relatively nearby spiral galaxy, and is part of the Antlia cluster — a group of over 200 galaxies held together by gravity. This cluster is unusual; unlike most other galaxy clusters, it appears to have no dominant galaxy within it. In this image, it is easy to spot IC 2560's spiral arms and barred structure. This spiral is what astronomers call a Seyfert-2 galaxy, a kind of spiral galaxy characterized by an extremely bright nucleus and very strong emission lines from certain elements — hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and oxygen. The bright center of the galaxy is thought to be caused by the ejection of huge amounts of super-hot gas from the region around a central black hole. There is a story behind the naming of this quirky constellation — Antlia was originally named antlia pneumatica by French astronomer Abbé Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, in honor of the invention of the air pump in the 17th century.

Credit: Hubble/European Space Agency and NASA

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Source Hubble Catches a Spiral in the Air Pump
Author NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA

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This image was originally posted to Flickr by NASA Goddard Photo and Video at https://flickr.com/photos/24662369@N07/9684625829. It was reviewed on 17 September 2016 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

17 September 2016

Public domain This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)
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current20:56, 17 September 2016Thumbnail for version as of 20:56, 17 September 20161,280 × 693 (158 KB)Vanished Account Byeznhpyxeuztibuo (talk | contribs)Transferred from Flickr via Flickr2Commons

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