ABOUT THIS IMAGE:

Discovered on October 20, 1784 by William Herschel, NGC 1232 is a spiral galaxy some 65 million light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus (the River). The galaxy is classified as an intermediate spiral galaxy — somewhere between a barred and an unbarred spiral galaxy. An image of this galaxy and its small companion galaxy NGC 1232A, also known as PGC 11834, in visible light was one of the first produced by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Both galaxies together are known as Arp 41. HAWK-I has now returned to NGC 1232 to show a different view of it at near-infrared wavelengths.

HAWK-I is one of the most powerful infrared imagers in the world, and this is one of the sharpest and most detailed pictures of this galaxy ever taken from Earth. The filters used were Y (shown in blue), J (in green), H (in muddy brown), and K (in red). The field of view of the image is about 6.4 arcminutes.