Credit: ESA / Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.
This week’s Hubble / ESA Picture of the Week contains NGC 7678 – a galaxy located approximately 164 million light – years away in the constellation Pegasus (The Winged Horse). With a diameter of about 115,000 light-years, this bright spiral system is about the same size as our own galaxy (the Milky Way), and was discovered in 1784 by the German-British astronomer William Herschel.
The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies is a catalog produced in 1966 by the American astronomer Halton Arp. NGC 7678 is one of the 338 galaxies presented in this catalog, which organizes peculiar galaxies according to their unusual properties. This galaxy, categorized here as Arp 28, is listed along with six others in the group “spiral galaxies with one heavy arm.”