Astronomers have been investigating a nearby lenticular galaxy known as NGC4324. They discovered young star formation complexes in the inner ring of this galaxy.
NGC4324 (also known as UGC 07451), located about 85 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, is an early-type lenticular galaxy about 66,000 light-years in size. Its stellar mass is about 56 billion solar masses, and its total mass is estimated to be at least 10 times larger.
Previous observations of NGC 4324 have shown that it contains a significant amount of gas, and revealed its remarkable structure — a bright blue ring of star formation embedded in a large-scale stellar disk typical of lenticular galaxies.
The results show that the outbreaks of star formation in these clusters began very recently — within 10 million years.