Hubble discovers a fantastic galaxy

This fantastic image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Telescope shows the galaxy named NGC 3156. It is about 73 million light-years away from Earth and is located in the small equatorial constellation Sextans.

NGC 3156 is a lenticular galaxy with two visible lines of dark reddish-brown dust running through the galaxy's disk. This galaxy type is named for its lens-like appearance when viewed from the side or edge. They lie somewhere between elliptical and spiral galaxies and have properties of both. Like spiral galaxies, lenticulars have a central bulge of stars and a large disk surrounding it. They often have spiral black dust lanes but no large spiral arms. Like elliptical galaxies, lenticular galaxies contain mostly older stars with little ongoing star formation.

Astronomers have studied NGC 3156 in many ways—from its globular clusters (roughly spherical groups of stars held together by gravity) to stars destroyed by the supermassive black hole at its center. Using Hubble data, stars near the galaxy's core were compared to stars in galaxies with similar-sized black holes. They found that NGC 3156 had a higher-than-average proportion of stars swallowed by the supermassive black hole compared to its peers.

References:

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2023/hubble-spots-a-dreamy-galaxy