# @europeanspaceagency on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DPucKplDJZC
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/35581663-europeanspaceagency-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/ec11de8928.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-10-12T22:16:48.000+00:00

## Caption

Hubble time! 🌌

NGC 2775 is a galaxy hard to categorise. Lying 67 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer (The Crab), it sports a smooth, featureless centre that is devoid of gas, resembling an elliptical galaxy. It also has a dusty ring with patchy star clusters, like a spiral galaxy. Which is it, then: spiral or elliptical — or neither?

Because we can only view NGC 2775 from one angle, it’s difficult to say for sure. Some researchers have classified NGC 2775 as a spiral galaxy because of its feathery ring of stars and dust, while others have classified it as a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies have features common to both spiral and elliptical galaxies.

It’s not yet known exactly how lenticular galaxies come to be, and they might form in a variety of ways. Lenticular galaxies might be spiral galaxies that have merged with other galaxies, or that have mostly run out of star-forming gas and lost their prominent spiral arms. They also might have started out more similar to elliptical galaxies, then collected gas into a disk around them.

Some evidence suggests that NGC 2775 has merged with other galaxies in the past. Invisible in this Hubble image, NGC 2775 has a tail of hydrogen gas that stretches almost 100 000 light-years around the galaxy. This faint tail could be the remnant of one or more galaxies that wandered too close to NGC 2775 before being stretched apart and absorbed. If NGC 2775 merged with other galaxies in the past, it could explain the galaxy’s strange appearance today.

A Hubble image of NGC 2775 was previously released in 2020. The new version adds observations of a specific wavelength of red light that is emitted by clouds of hydrogen gas surrounding massive young stars.

📸 @europeanspaceagency / @hubbleesa & @NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; @creativecommons BY 4.0
📹 ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, N. Bartmann; CC BY 4.0

## Stats

- **Views:** 29,850
- **Likes:** 11,139
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 61

## Credits

| Name | Username | Profile | Role |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ESA - European Space Agency | @europeanspaceagency | https://gondola.cc/europeanspaceagency | Government Organization |
| J.L.Lopez | @xandler80 | https://gondola.cc/xandler80 | Producer |
| J.L.Lopez | @xandler80 | https://gondola.cc/xandler80 | Editor |
| Hubble Space Telescope | @hubbleesa | https://gondola.cc/hubbleesa | Photographer |
| J.L.Lopez | @xandler80 | https://gondola.cc/xandler80 | Social Media Manager |
| J.L.Lopez | @xandler80 | https://gondola.cc/xandler80 | Publisher |
| J.L.Lopez | @xandler80 | https://gondola.cc/xandler80 | Copywriter |
| J.L.Lopez | @xandler80 | https://gondola.cc/xandler80 | Community Manager |

## Tags

space, europeanspaceagency

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