While the James Webb Space Telescope has been getting a lot of press lately, its predecessor the Hubble Space Telescope continues to impress; this time the galaxy NGC 6956, a nearly perfect example of an excluded galaxy located approximately 214 million light-years from Earth.
Barred galaxies, named after the prominent “bar” of stars that cut across the galactic nucleus, are among the most well-known types of galaxies in the known universe; 70% of all galaxies making up the estimate (Opens in a new tab). Bar structures are much more common in galaxies with active galactic nuclei, as gas and other material are fed to the galactic nucleus along these bars.
This process helps eventually destabilize the bar (Opens in a new tab)however, the more mass is poured into the galactic nucleus, the lighter the bar becomes, eventually softening the bar into a more traditional spiral formation – like that of NGC 2985 (Opens in a new tab) – Most people think of a spiral galaxy.
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!
According to a * image description by NASA (Opens in a new tab), this latest photo of NGC 6956 was supposed to look like Cepheid variable stars, which are stars whose brightness cycles between bright and dim intervals. These times of brightening and darkening are directly related to the actual brightness of the stars, we can calculate these variations in apparent brightness to the actual brightness of the stars, which allows us to determine their distance from us.
This is a crucial way for astronomers to determine the distance of extragalactic objects like NGC 6956, with few other ways to do it that we know of now. Other interesting features of NGC 6956 include the visible Type Ia supernova, which is the product of an exploding white dwarf star from accretion material from a companion star.
This type of supernova is another key method for determining the distance of distant galaxies, since astronomers can measure how quickly a supernova dims to help determine its distance from Earth. And while filling out a galactic map accurately is useful in itself, repeated measurements of the distances of extragalactic objects are a great tool for understanding the current rate of expansion in the universe.
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