Hubble Space Telescope Observes NGC 1803 | Astronomy – Sci-News.com
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a beautiful picture of a spiral galaxy called NGC 1803.
This Hubble image shows NGC 1803, a spiral galaxy located 200 million light-years away in the constellation of Pictor. The image is made up of observations from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument in the near-infrared and optical parts of the spectrum. Two filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Bellini et al.
NGC 1803 lies approximately 200 million light-years away in the southern constellation Pictor.
Otherwise known as ESO 203-18 and LEDA 16715, the galaxy has a diameter of about 70,000 light-years.
It forms a close pair with the nebulous lenticular galaxy LEDA 16720 (not visible in the Hubble image).
NGC 1803 was discovered by the English astronomer John Herschel on December 28, 1834.
“Herschel is a big name in astronomy; John, his father William, and his aunt Caroline all made huge contributions to the field, and their legacies remain today,” the Hubble astronomers said.
“William systematically catalogued many of the objects he viewed in the night sky, named many moons in the Solar System, discovered infrared radiation, and more.”
“Caroline discovered several comets and nebulae.”
“John took this aforementioned catalogue of night-sky objects and reworked and expanded it into his General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars.”
“This was the basis for the cataloguing system still used today by astronomers.”
