Imagine a galaxy with its shining stars and cosmic dust. What does this look like in your mind? Most likely it's a spinning circle galactic energy. Galaxy often described as one of several broadly defined shapes—elliptical, spiral, or lenticular—as described Hubble sequence. Meanwhile, Vaucouleur systems extends the Hubble model by adding, among other things, more precise notations for the various spirals.
Regardless of your preferred galactic organizational system, you will likely have difficulty describing Recent image of NGC 2775 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Located 67 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer, NGC 2775 is somewhat reminiscent of an elliptical galaxy with its large, featureless central region. At the same time, its dust-covered ring of outer star clusters is usually found in spiral variants. So what kind of galaxy is NGC 2775?
According to NASAthe answer is yet to be determined. Astronomers favor either an elliptical or spiral shape, depending on who you ask, while some experts even argue that its spiral and elliptical properties fit the “lenticular” definition. This could actually happen because astronomers are still not entirely sure how lenticular galaxies form in the first place.
At least some evidence suggests that NGC 2775 acquired its strange shape after merging with other galaxies centuries ago. Although NGC 2775 is not visible in the Hubble image, it has a tail of hydrogen gas that extends nearly 100,000 light-years around it. This tail may be all that remains of previously devoured galaxies.
Additional observations from space telescopes will likely solve the mystery of NGC 2775 once and for all. Until then, however, most astronomers consider it to be a flocculent spiral galaxy with extremely hazy and discontinuous arms.
