This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image looks at one of the nearest, massive lenticular galaxies to Earth, NGC 1023 some 36 million light-years away. Lenticular galaxies get their names from their edge-on appearance that resembles a lens. They are intermediate galaxies between ellipticals and spirals. Lenticular galaxies have a large central bulge and a flattened disk like spirals, but no spiral arms. Like ellipticals, lenticular galaxies don't have much gas and dust, and also have mainly old stars.
