Post #435

Clearing away the cosmic dust 🧹 Looking beyond what’s visible to human eyes, astronomers discovered that this spiral galaxy — seen from the side — has an intensely bright center, obscured by dark dust. Galaxy NGC 7172 is known as a Seyfert galaxy, with an active center powered by matter accumulating onto a supermassive black hole. This image combines data from two sets of nasa hubble observations, both of which were proposed to study nearby active galactic nuclei. The image also combines data from two instruments — Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3.