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The glittering galaxy in this NASA\/ESA Hubble Space Telescope\u00a0Picture of the Week\u00a0is NGC 6951, which resides about 70 million light-years away in the constellation\u00a0Cepheus.<\/p>\n
As this Hubble image shows, NGC 6951 is a\u00a0spiral galaxy\u00a0with plenty of intriguing structures. Most eye-catching are its spiral arms, which are dotted with brilliant red\u00a0nebulae, bright blue\u00a0stars\u00a0and filamentary dust clouds. The spiral arms loop around the galactic centre, which has a golden glow that comes from a population of older stars. The centre of the galaxy is also distinctly elongated, revealing the presence of a slowly rotating bar of stars.<\/p>\n
NGC 6951\u2019s bar may be responsible for another remarkable feature: a white-blue ring that encloses the very heart of the galaxy. This is called a circumnuclear starburst ring \u2014 essentially, a circle of enhanced star formation around the nucleus of a galaxy. The bar funnels gas toward the centre of the galaxy, where it collects in a ring about 3800 light-years across. Two dark dust lanes that run parallel to the bar mark the points where gas from the bar enters the ring.<\/p>\n
The dense gas of a circumnuclear starburst ring is the perfect environment to churn out an impressive number of stars. Using data from Hubble, astronomers have identified more than 80 potential\u00a0star clusters\u00a0within NGC 6951\u2019s ring. Many of the stars formed less than 100 million years ago, but the ring itself is longer-lived, potentially having existed for 1\u20131.5 billion years.<\/p>\n
Astronomers have imaged NGC 6951 with Hubble for a wide variety of reasons, including mapping the dust in nearby galaxies, studying the centres of disc galaxies and keeping tabs on recent\u00a0supernovae\u00a0(of which NGC 6951 has hosted five or six).<\/p>\n
[Image Description:<\/i>\u00a0A spiral galaxy with large, open arms. A bar of yellow light, where old stars are gathered, crosses the middle of the disk. The very centre is a white point surrounded by a small, shining ring of star clusters. Thin lanes of dust swirl around this ring, reaching out to follow the spiral arms; also visible across the arms are red, glowing spots where stars are forming. To the right a star shines large and bright.]<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n