NASA / ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope recently observed a luminous lenticular galaxy, classified as NGC 5283, located approximately 168 million light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus. NGC 5283 contains an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which is an extremely bright region at the heart of a galaxy where a supermassive black hole lies.
A lenticular galaxy has a shape reminiscent of a lens, or in other words, a central bulge surrounded by a flattened disk with no pattern of spiral arms. Since NGC 5283 has an AGN it’s also a Seyfert galaxy, the latter of which is one of the two largest groups of active galaxies, along with quasars. Only around 10% of all galaxies are Seyfert galaxies, because the other ones have AGNs that emit so much radiation that it outshines the structure of their host galaxy, making it impossible to observe the structure.
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Hubble observed this galaxy as part of a survey for a dataset about nearby AGNs, which will serve as a resource for astronomers investigating AGN physics, black holes, host galaxy structure, and more,” said NASA.
