[3] It is dominated by millions of bright stars and dark dust, in spiral arms rotating about the center.

Open clusters containing bright blue stars are sprinkled along these spiral arms, with dark lanes of dense interstellar dust between.

Less visible are dimmer stars and interstellar gas, comprising such a high mass that they dominate the dynamics of the inner galaxy.

While NGC 1232 is classified as an intermediate spiral galaxy, the bulge shows hints of a galactic bar.

The paper concludes that this may be the first case of the dwarf galaxy-large galaxy collision whose evidence is only visible in the X-Ray.

[5] As a result, an interaction with another galaxy, other than NGC 1232A, is sometimes thought to be the cause of unusual bending in the spiral arms.

In 2018, a study of the star formation rates in NGC 1232 took images of the galaxy in Hydrogen Alpha, finding over 970 HII regions.

The study found that X-Ray emissions may be quenching star formation in some areas of the galaxy, because there seems to be lower concentration of HII regions there.