2026 May 26 - NGC 3660 and Burçin's Galaxy

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:01]Greetings and welcome to the Astronomy Picture of the Day podcast.

[00:00:07]Today's picture is titled NGC 3660 and Burçin's Galaxy. So, what do we see here? Well, here we see two main galaxies, although there are several more, in fact, a lot more in the image here.

[00:00:26]And the image to the top, the galaxy up there, is known as NGC 3660.

[00:00:34]It is a nice barred spiral galaxy, much like our own Milky Way. And we can see the distinct bar running through the center, and that looks a little bit yellower, meaning that it has a population of older stars mixed in, so a lot of red giant stars mixed with hotter stars, that gives it kind of a yellowish color.

[00:00:56]The spiral arms are dominated by the blue stars that form there, those very hot blue stars, which don't live for a very long period of time. So, there's signs of relatively recent star formation.

[00:01:11]The pink within though in those spiral arms is not stars, those are actually hydrogen gas, which is glowing.

[00:01:19]So, that pink and blue combination is a telltale sign of star formation in a galaxy like this, which is probably much like our own Milky Way.

[00:01:32]Now, the second galaxy down toward the bottom, known as Burçin's Galaxy, is a little bit different. Now, this is further away. These two galaxies are not associated with one another, but this one has a central region, which looks like a nice elliptical galaxy.

[00:01:50]Old stars, and not a lot of the young blue stars in that central region.

[00:01:57]In a way, it looks a lot like the bar in the spiral galaxy.

[00:02:02]But around it are rings of material, and those rings look much younger and do seem to have some of that blue coloring we associate with star formation.

[00:02:14]Now, this could be because of various accretion of galaxies. So, the exact reason we don't know for sure, but some of the thoughts that have been put forward is that you're accreting other galaxies and pulling them in into a disc of material around the larger galaxy.

[00:02:34]And then eventually, you will use up all the gas and dust, form the stars, and it will settle down and combine with the other material and eventually just be one big galaxy there. So, we may be catching that accretion at an earlier stage than we might have otherwise seen.

[00:02:54]So, two very diff- different galaxies, one very prominent, photogenic galaxy we see up toward the top, another more unusual, more mysterious one down toward the bottom.

[00:03:08]So, that was our picture of the day titled NGC 3660 and Burchen's Galaxy.

[00:03:16]We'll be back again tomorrow for the next picture.

[00:03:19]So, until then, have a great day, everyone, and I will see you in class.