The Hubble Space Telescope took a striking photo of a dying galaxy.
The galaxy, known as NGC 1947, was discovered nearly 200 years ago by a Scottish-born astronomer, James Dunlop, who discovered it while studying the night sky in Australia. The galaxy can only be seen from the Southern Hemisphere, in the constellation Dorado, the dolphin fish. It is a lenticular galaxy, meaning that the original shape was somewhere between a spiral and elliptical galaxy.
Over the past 200 years, NGC 1947 has lost most of the material that makes up its distinctive spiral arms, which once revolved around its center, Hubble astronomers have in a NASA Declaration. We can still see what is left of the structure, thanks to the lighting of millions of stars. In the new image of Hubble, faint wires can still be made from the remaining gas and dust.
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!
Because the galaxy lacks most of the star-forming material, it is unlikely to create new stars, according to Hubble astronomers. When dense clouds of gas and dust collapse under the pressure of gravity, the cloud creates a disk of material that gets fuel new star growth. Without enough gas and dust to form those dense clouds, NGC 1947 will continue to fade over time.
NASA posted this image of Hubble after a error in telescope software stopped the science activities unexpectedly on March 7th. The telescope went online again and the observations started again on March 11th.
Follow Kasandra Brabaw on Twitter @KassieBrabaw. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.