Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features a galaxy that’s hard to categorise. The galaxy in question is NGC 2775, which lies 67 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer (The Crab). NGC 2775 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.

[Image Description: A galaxy seen face-on, with a slightly elliptical disc that appears to have a hole in the centre like a doughnut. In the hole, the core is a brightly glowing point that shines light out beyond the edge of the disc. Around the hole is an inner ring of dust, and at the galaxy’s edge is a thicker outer ring of dust, with a swirling web of dust strands in between. Blue stars and red nebulae are visible behind the dust.]

Oliver “Tuku” Mtukudzi (22 September 1952 – 23 January 2019) was a Zimbabweanmusician, businessman, philanthropist, human rights activist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Southern Africa Region.

Chief Sunday Adeniyi Adegeye MFR (born 22 September 1946), known professionally as King Sunny Adé, is a Nigerian jùjú singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist.He is regarded as one of the first African pop musicians to gain international success and has been called one of the most influential musicians of all time.

Sunny Adé formed his backing band in 1967, eventually known as his African Beats. After achieving national success in Nigeria during the 1970s and founding his own independent label, Sunny Adé signed to Island Records in 1982 and achieved international success with the albums Juju Music (1982) and Synchro System (1983); the latter garnered him a Grammy nomination, a first for a Nigerian artist. His 1998 album Odu also garnered a Grammy nomination. Sunny Adé served as board chairman of the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria before it got licensed and was later appointed honorary president of the society in recognition of his leadership role in the society.

NGC 5248 (also known as Caldwell 45) is a compact intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Boötes. Its velocity with respect to the cosmic microwave background is 1437 ± 20 km/s, which corresponds to a Hubble distance of 69.1 ± 4.9 Mly(21.19 ± 1.51 Mpc). However, 17 non redshift measurements give a much closer distance of 42.52 ± 3.16 Mly (13.038 ± 0.969 Mpc). It was discovered on 15 April 1784 by German-British astronomer William Herschel.

NGC 5248 is a member of the NGC 5248 Group of galaxies, itself one of the Virgo III Groups strung out to the east of the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies.

Henry Butler (September 21, 1948 – July 2, 2018 NOLA) was an American jazz and blues pianist. He learned piano, drums, and saxophone in school. He received a college degree and graduate degree and taught at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. He worked as a soloist and in groups in Los Angeles and New York City. Despite his blindness, he spent time as a photographer and had his work exhibited in galleries.