According to a joint report by the European Space Agency/Hubble Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope recently released the "Picture of the Week", showing the dust-striped barred spiral galaxy NGC 7496 24 million light-years away from the Earth. The galaxy is located in the constellation Cras, and its core hides a powerful supermassive black hole, swallowing the surrounding gas and material, making NGC 7496 a typical representative of an active galactic nucleus.
NGC 7496 is a dynamic barred spiral galaxy that contains both a supermassive black hole and an active star-forming region. Joint observations from multiple telescopes reveal the cosmic-scale interactions between dust, radiation and hydrogen clouds that together shape the evolution of the galaxy. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST team
In order to better understand the structure and activity of NGC 7496, astronomers used various types of light observations, from radio waves to ultraviolet light, to explore the galaxy's intensely energetic core, thick dust clouds, and the birth process of new stars. NGC 7496 is one of the targets of the "High-Resolution Physics of Nearby Galaxies" (PHANGS) international collaborative project, which combines the resources of the world's top observatories such as the Atacama Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Hubble. It is worth mentioning that NGC 7496 was the first galaxy observed by the Webb Telescope in the PHANGS project sample.
Different telescopes provide unique perspectives on NGC 7496. Hubble's high-resolution ultraviolet imaging shows clusters of newly formed stars releasing massive amounts of energy. By analyzing these details, scientists are able to infer the star's age and mass, while also understanding how much of its light is obscured by surrounding dust.
This spiral galaxy is part of the Program for High Angular Resolution Physical Observations of Nearby Galaxies (PHANGS). The large-scale project combines observations of numerous galaxies from multiple space and ground-based telescopes to help researchers explore all stages of the star formation cycle - from the birth of stars in clouds of dust and gas to the energy released during the formation of complex structures revealed in new images from the Webb Telescope. Image source: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Lee (STScI), T. Williams (University of Oxford), PHANGS team
In 2022, Hubble released images of NGC 7496, and this new observation further highlights the dazzling star cluster wrapped in luminous hydrogen gas clouds. These findings help scientists study the luminous nebulae formed after massive stars explode into supernovae, as well as the evolution of nebulae that give birth to a new generation of stars.
This joint observation by multiple international astronomical telescopes not only revealed the birth and destruction cycle of stars in the NGC 7496 galaxy, but also deepened human understanding of the complex evolution process of the galaxy.
Compiled from /ScitechDaily