images

Elliptical galaxy NGC 4365 in Virgo

by

ESA/ESO/Novapix

Reference

a-gax43-65001

Date

2006-09-11

The elliptical galaxy NGC 4365 is located about 55 million light-years from the earth. Astronomers have identified a huge number of "young" stellar clusters, only a few billion years old, inside this "old" elliptical galaxy, probably aged some 12 billion years. For the first time, it has been possible to identify several distinct periods of star-formation in a galaxy as old as this one.