NGC 2997 Spiral Galaxy

About this Image

NGC2997 is a face-on spiral galaxies in the southern constelation Antlia. It is showing very well defined spiral arms and displays a dynamic appearance, appealing by the red and blue knots tracing the arms. The red knots are apparently diffuse gaseous nebulae in which star formation is just taking place, and which are excited to shine by its very hot young stars. The blue regions represent young stellar populations which have formed some dozens of million years ago.

Dark dust lanes follow the spiral structure throughout the disk, and may be traced well into the central region to the nucleus. NGC 2997 is particularly notable for a nucleus surrounded by a chain of hot giant clouds of ionized hydrogen. It is composed of an older yellowish stellar population which dominates the whole central region.
The galaxy forms a small physical group, the NGC2997 group, with the peculiar radio galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128) and with the galaxy M 83.

The distance to this galaxy measures 25 million light years.
North is up.

Compare a high quality (0.25") ESO image of this galaxy: 1.
Literature on NGC 2997 gas clouds: 2.
A faint background polar-ring galaxy is showing up at 11 h from the center within one of the galaxy arms, find a 200% size crop shown below.