The spiral galaxy NGC 976 is a galaxy located about 150 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Aries, near the celestial equator , and is therefore at least partially visible from both hemispheres at certain times of the year. Your current altitude is 2° above the horizon. And, given its magnitude B of 12.9, NGC 976 is visible with the help of a telescope that has an aperture of 10 inches (250 mm) or more.
It was discovered in 1876 by the German astronomer Wilhelm Tempel , who worked in Marseille until the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 until he moved to Italy, where he lived until his death in 1889.
Also known as IRAS 02311+2045, LEDA 9776 and UGC 2042, the galaxy has a diameter of 90,000 light years and , “despite its calm appearance, NGC 976 has hosted one of the most violent astronomical phenomena known: an explosion of supernova . These violently catastrophic events take place at the end of the lives of massive stars and can outshine entire galaxies for a short period.
“The amount of energy spewed into space by supernova explosions is very uniform, allowing astronomers to estimate their distances from how bright they appear when viewed from Earth,” they clarify.
This image we see of NGC 976 is the product of a large collection of Hubble observations in separate visible and infrared exposures with Hubble’s WFC3 camera, of nearby galaxies hosting supernovae, as well as a pulsating class of stars known as Cepheid variables. . To do this, they used four filters to sample various wavelengths.
The astronomers behind the telescope remind us that the color we see comes from assigning different hues to each monochrome image associated with an individual filter.
Reference: NASA / ESA / Hubble / D. Jones / Riess et al.
