NASA recently shared an image of a lenticular galaxy NGC 6684 captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in a pale light.
NGC 6684 is a Lenticular Galaxy in the Pavo constellation. It was observed in May 1983 and March 1984 at the 3.6-m telescope of the European Southern Observatory at La Silla, Chile.
Located around 44 million light-years from Earth, the galaxy lacks the dark dust lanes that thread through other galaxies.
Although lenticular galaxies, which are lens-shaped, lack the Andromeda Galaxy’s prominent spiral arms, they do have a massive disk. One such lenticular galaxy is NGC 6684. This places them somewhere between spiral and elliptical galaxies, giving these galaxies a hazy, ghostly appearance.
The data used to create this image was collected as part of a survey of the nearby universe called Every Known local Galaxy, which attempts to examine all galaxies within ten megaparsecs (32.6 million light-years) that the telescope has not yet observed.