ASTRO: NGC 7217

NGC 7217 is a very strange galaxy in Pegasus. It has a huge core of old
stars that show filaments of star clouds resembling arms. These grow
faint then suddenly turn blue indicating the stars making up this
outside area are all young hot stars. The filaments of spiral like
structure can be followed right in to about 10 seconds of the very core
of the galaxy. They cross this fainter region and keep going. This is
a very strange structure. The outer blue region has caused the galaxy
to be classified as a ring galaxy which is generally conceded to be
wrong. It's just an illusion caused by the faint region between the old
and young star regions. The galaxy has an active nucleus and is a LINER
class galaxy. I couldn't find a good distance estimate for it. Red
shift indicates it is very near at about 30 million light years but at
that distance red shift can be highly misleading. Still it appears to
be in the ball park at least.

Rick
--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

Rick Johnson wrote:
NGC 7217 is a very strange galaxy in Pegasus.

Strange but beautiful. Very nice image.


--
Adriano
34°14'11.7"N

Great detail Rick. It looked more like an elliptical galaxy in my tries as
the arms are so tightly wound that it needs good resolution to see the
spiral structure at all.

Stefan

"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
ster.com...
NGC 7217 is a very strange galaxy in Pegasus. It has a huge core of old
stars that show filaments of star clouds resembling arms. These grow
faint then suddenly turn blue indicating the stars making up this
outside area are all young hot stars. The filaments of spiral like
structure can be followed right in to about 10 seconds of the very core
of the galaxy. They cross this fainter region and keep going. This is
a very strange structure. The outer blue region has caused the galaxy
to be classified as a ring galaxy which is generally conceded to be
wrong. It's just an illusion caused by the faint region between the old
and young star regions. The galaxy has an active nucleus and is a LINER
class galaxy. I couldn't find a good distance estimate for it. Red
shift indicates it is very near at about 30 million light years but at
that distance red shift can be highly misleading. Still it appears to
be in the ball park at least.

Rick
--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".