APOD: 2021 April 7 - Threads of NGC 1947

Good morning, Rallypoint. Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is titled "Threads of NGC 1947." Discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop, NGC 1947 resides some 40 million light years away in the southern constellation Dorado (Dolphinfish). The remaining gas and dust rings of the galaxy are backlit by the millions of stars rotating about its core. That rotation is perpendicular to that of the gas and dust lanes, leading scientists to speculate that NGC 1947 accreted a second galaxy over the course of the last 3 billion years or so. This image was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).