                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2025 March 11
       A spiral galaxy is shown in great detail. Visible are blue star
    clusters, red nebulas, and brown dust in a spiral pattern around the
    image and galaxy center. Please see the explanation for more detailed
                                information.

                 NGC 1672: Barred Spiral Galaxy from Hubble
     Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, O. Fox, L. Jenkins, S. Van Dyk, A.
   Filippenko, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, D. de Martin (ESA/Hubble),
                           M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble)

   Explanation: Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even
   our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar.
   Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672, featured here, was captured
   in spectacular detail in an image taken by the orbiting Hubble Space
   Telescope. Visible are dark filamentary dust lanes, young clusters of
   bright blue stars, red emission nebulas of glowing hydrogen gas, a long
   bright bar of stars across the center, and a bright active nucleus that
   likely houses a supermassive black hole. Light takes about 60 million
   years to reach us from NGC 1672, which spans about 75,000 light years
   across. NGC 1672, which appears toward the constellation of the
   Dolphinfish (Dorado), has been studied to find out how a spiral bar
   contributes to star formation in a galaxy's central regions.

                   Tomorrow's picture: comet versus galaxy
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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