NASA’s Hubble telescope is at it again! The space telescope has captured a marvelous image of a dying galaxy. Dubbed the NGC 1947, the galaxy was discovered almost 200 years ago by astronomer James Dunlop.  The galaxy is only visible from the southern hemisphere, in the Dorado constellation. It’s a lenticular galaxy that means its original shape was between a spiral and elliptical galaxy.

In the last two centuries, the galaxy has lost most of its material that made up its spiral arms, said Hubble astronomer in an official statement. Thanks to backlighting from stars, the faint threads of gas and dust from the galaxy are visible.

Since most star-forming material is gone from the galaxy, it’s unlikely to create new starts, as per Hubble astronomers. When clouds of dust and gas collapse under gravity’s pressure, a disk of materials is created that eventually leads to the growth of a new cloud. Due to the lack of gas and dust required to form dense clouds, the NGC 1947 galaxy will continue to fade with time.

The new image is the first to be posted after the Hubble telescope’s software suffered a glitch, halting all science operations. The telescope was fixed and came back online on March 11.

Back in January, the Hubble telescope captured a cosmic sparkle coming from a dwarf galaxy that is believed to be 59 million light-years away. NASA explained the image saying: “A trio of Sun-studying missions took images of Earth and some of our solar system neighbors from different vantage points last year.”

Besides, NASA also has plans to launch the James Webb telescope in 2021. Earlier, it was supposed to be launched in March 2020; however, the launch got delayed due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Now, the expected launch date is said to be October 31, 2021.“Webb is the world’s most complex space observatory and our top science priority, and we’ve worked hard to keep progress moving during the pandemic,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.