This is NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope The image shows a galaxy that is difficult to classify. We are talking about the galaxy NGC 2775, which is located at a distance of 67 million light years in the constellation Cancer (Crab). NGC 2775 has a smooth, featureless center devoid of gas, reminiscent of an elliptical galaxy. It also has a dusty ring of spotted star clusters, reminiscent of a spiral galaxy. What is it: spiral or elliptical – or neither?
Since we can only view NGC 2775 from one angle, it's hard to say for sure. Some researchers classify NGC 2775 as a spiral galaxy due to its feathery ring of stars and dust, while others classify it as a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies have features common to both spiral and elliptical galaxies.
Astronomers aren't sure exactly how lenticular galaxies came to be, and they can form in a variety of ways. Lenticular galaxies may be spiral galaxies that have merged with other galaxies or that have essentially run out of star-forming gas and lost their protruding spiral arms. They could also have started out as elliptical galaxies and then collected gas into a disk around them.
Some evidence suggests that NGC 2775 has merged with other galaxies in the past. Unseen in this Hubble image, NGC 2775 has a tail of hydrogen gas that extends nearly 100,000 light-years around the galaxy. This faint tail may be the remnant of one or more galaxies that came too close to NGC 2775 before being stretched out and consumed. If NGC 2775 merged with other galaxies in the past, this could explain the galaxy's strange appearance today.
Most astronomers classify NGC 2775 as a loose spiral galaxy. Flocculent spirals have poorly defined, discontinuous arms, often called “feathers” or “tufts” of stars, that loosely form the spiral arms.
Hubble previously published an image of NGC 2775. 2020. This new version adds observations of a specific wavelength of red light emitted by clouds of hydrogen gas surrounding massive young stars, visible in the image as bright pinkish blobs. This extra wavelength of light helps astronomers better determine where in the galaxy new stars are forming.
