Note: Single-source report; awaiting corroboration.
The NASA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of NGC 1266, a lenticular galaxy about 100 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus, also known as the Celestial River. NGC 1266 features a bright center and a shape suggesting spiral structure but lacks obvious spiral arms.
Lenticular galaxies like NGC 1266 form an evolutionary bridge between spiral and elliptical galaxies. They have lens-shaped bodies with a bright central bulge and a flattened disk like spiral galaxies, but exhibit little to no star formation and no spiral arms, resembling elliptical galaxies.
The image shows reddish-brown clumps and filaments of dust partially obscuring NGC 1266, while red, blue, and orange light from distant galaxies shines through its diffuse outer regions against a dark background.