An unusual large galaxy with a shape bordering between
spiral and elliptical has been spotted by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
NGC
7049 sits in the southern constellation Indus, and is the brightest of a cluster
of galaxies, a so-called Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG). Typical BCGs are
some of the oldest and most massive galaxies, which provide excellent opportunities
for astronomers to study the elusive globular clusters lurking within.
The halo, a ghostly region of diffuse light surrounding
the galaxy, is composed of myriads of individual stars and provides a luminous
background to the swirling ring of dust lanes surrounding NGC 7049's core.
Small faint points of light sprinkled throughout the
galaxy represent globular clusters, which are gravitational groupings of
several hundreds of thousands
of stars. They contain some of the first stars to be produced in a galaxy.
NGC 7049 has far fewer such clusters than other similar
giant galaxies in very big, rich groups. This indicates to astronomers how the
surrounding environment influenced the formation of galaxy halos in the early
universe.
Hubble captured this image using its Advanced Camera for
Surveys, which is primed to hunt galaxies and galaxy clusters in the remote and
ancient universe. The space telescope recently
imaged a group of colliding galaxies chosen in an online voting contest.
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