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Credit & Copyright: NASA,
ESA,
W. Freedman (U. Chicago)
et al.,
& the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI), SDSS; Processing: Judy Schmidt
Explanation:
How much mass do flocculent spirals hide?
The featured true color image of
flocculent spiral galaxy NGC 4414 was taken with the
Hubble Space Telescope
to help answer this question.
The featured image was augmented with data from the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).
Flocculent spirals -- galaxies without well-defined spiral arms --
are a quite common form of galaxy, and
NGC 4414
is one of the closest.
Stars and gas near the visible edge of
spiral galaxies
orbit the center so fast that the gravity from a large amount of unseen
dark
matter must be present to hold them together.
Understanding the matter and dark matter distribution of NGC 4414
helps humanity calibrate the rest of the galaxy and, by deduction,
flocculent spirals in general.
Further, calibrating the
distance to
NGC 4414 helps
humanity calibrate the cosmological distance
scale of the entire
visible universe.
& the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI), SDSS; Processing: Judy Schmidt
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: spiral galaxy - NGC 4414
Publications with words: spiral galaxy - NGC 4414
See also: