Big, Beautiful and Blue: Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 2336 | Hubble

Big, Beautiful & Blue: Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 2336 | Hubble

NGC 2336 is the quintessential galaxy—big, beautiful and blue—and it is captured here by the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. The barred spiral galaxy stretches an immense 200,000 light-years across and is located approximately 100 million light years away in the northern constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).

Its spiral arms are glittered with young stars, visible in their bright blue light. In contrast, the redder central part of the galaxy is dominated by older stars.

NGC 2336 was discovered in 1876 by German astronomer Wilhelm Tempel, using a 28-centimeter telescope. This Hubble image is so much better than the view Tempel would have had—Hubble’s main mirror is 2.4 meters across, nearly ten times the size of the telescope Tempel used. In 1987, NGC 2336 experienced a Type-Ia supernova, the only observed supernova in the galaxy since its discovery 111 years earlier.

A barred spiral galaxy is a spiral galaxy with a central bar-shaped structure composed of stars. Bars are found in about two thirds of all spiral galaxies, and generally affect both the motions of stars and interstellar gas within spiral galaxies and can affect spiral arms as well. The Milky Way Galaxy, where our Solar System is located, is classified as a barred spiral galaxy. [Wikipedia]

Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, V. Antoniou

Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

Release Date: March 1, 2021

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