Odd-looking galaxy with a bright core features as the Hubble Picture of the Week

NGC 4102 is an intermediate spiral galaxy located only 56 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major (The Great Bear). The galaxy’s center draws much attention because it hosts an active galactic nucleus (AGN). An AGN is powered by a supermassive black hole. The supermassive black hole pulls in gas rapidly.

The gas spirals inward at an incredible speed. As the gas spirals inward, it gets heated to extreme temperatures and emits bright radiation. This is why galaxies with an AGN have very luminous centers. NGC 4102’s center, though, is not quite as bright as that of some other galaxies that host an AGN.

This is because there are different types of active galactic nuclei: the more powerful ones and the calmer ones. NGC 4102 falls under the calmer type. It is classified as Compton-thick. This means that its nucleus is covered by a thick layer of gas.

NGC 4102 is also a LINER (Low-ionization Nuclear Emission-line Region) galaxy. In LINER galaxies, the gas near the center glows with weakly ionized elements. This suggests that the galaxy’s supermassive black hole is not very powerful.

This image was made using data from the Wide Field Camera 3. The Wide Field Camera 3 replaced the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). WFPC2 was used to create the previous Hubble image of this galaxy.

This new observation of NGC 4102 is part of a program that combines data from Hubble and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The program aims to study the relationship between NGC 4102 and its active galactic nucleus.

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