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This cosmic portrait – captured with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 – shows a stunning view of the spiral galaxy NGC 4571, which lies approximately 60 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. This constellation – whose name translates as Bernice’s Hair – was named after an Egyptian queen who lived more than 2,200 years ago.
As majestic as spiral galaxies like NGC 4571 are, they are far from the largest structures known to astronomers. NGC 4571 is part of the Virgo cluster, which contains more than a thousand galaxies. This cluster is in turn part of the larger Virgo supercluster, which also encompasses the Local Group containing our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
This image comes from a large program of observations designed to produce a treasure trove of combined observations from two great observatories: Hubble and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). ALMA is a vast telescope consisting of 66 high-precision antennas high in the Chilean Andes, which together observe at wavelengths between infrared and radio waves. This allows ALMA to detect the clouds of cool interstellar dust which give rise to new stars. Hubble’s razor-sharp observations at ultraviolet wavelengths, meanwhile, allow astronomers to pinpoint the location of hot, luminous, newly formed stars. Together, the ALMA and Hubble observations provide a vital repository of data to astronomers studying star formation, as well as laying the groundwork for future science with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team
TheHubble Space Telescope imaged this lonely spiral galaxy called UGC 9391. The galaxy resides 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco near the north celestial pole. Its star-studded spiral arms stand in splendid isolation against a backdrop of distant galaxies, which are only visible as indistinct swirls or smudges thanks to their vast distances from Earth. The image also features some much brighter foreground stars closer to home. These bright nearby stars are ringed with diffraction spikes – prominent spikes caused by light interacting with the inner workings of Hubble’s secondary mirror supports.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al
For more information, visit: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-spies-a-lo...
This image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 3254, observed using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). WFC3 has the capacity to observe ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light. The image is a composite of observations taken in the visible and infrared. NGC 3254 looks like a typical spiral galaxy, viewed side-on. However, NGC 3254 has a fascinating secret hiding in plain sight – it is a Seyfert galaxy. Seyfert galaxies have extraordinarily active cores (called an active galactic nucleus) that release as much energy as the rest of the galaxy put together.
Seyfert galaxies are not rare – about 10% of all galaxies may be Seyfert galaxies. They belong to the class of “active galaxies” – galaxies that have supermassive black holes at their centers accreting material, which releases vast amounts of radiation. The active cores of Seyfert galaxies such as NGC 3254 are brightest when observed in light outside the visible spectrum. At other wavelengths, this image would look very different, with the galaxy’s core shining extremely bright.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-peers-at-a...
The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week is NGC 1637, a spiral galaxy located 38 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus.
This image comes from an observing programme dedicated to studying star formation in nearby galaxies. Stars form in cold, dusty gas clouds that collapse under their own gravity. As young stars grow, they heat their nurseries through starlight, winds, and powerful outflows. Together, these factors play a role in controlling the rate at which future generations of stars form.
Evidence of star formation is scattered all around NGC 1637, if you know where to look. The galaxy’s spiral arms are dotted with what appear to be pink clouds, many of which are accompanied by bright blue stars. The pinkish colour comes from hydrogen atoms that have been excited by ultraviolet light from young, massive stars. This contrasts with the warm yellow glow of the galaxy’s centre, which is home to a densely packed collection of older, redder stars.
The stars that set their birthplaces aglow are comparatively short-lived, and many of these stars will explode as supernovae just a few million years after they’re born. In 1999, NGC 1637 played host to a supernova, pithily named SN 1999EM, that was lauded as the brightest supernova seen that year. When a massive star expires as a supernova, the explosion outshines its entire home galaxy for a short time. While a supernova marks the end of a star’s life, it can also jump start the formation of new stars by compressing nearby clouds of gas, beginning the stellar lifecycle anew.
[Image Description: A spiral galaxy filling the view. Its disc is filled with bright red spots where stars are forming, dark reddish threads of dust that obscure light, and bluish glowing areas where older stars are concentrated. It has a large, glowing yellow oval area at the centre, from which two spiral arms wind through the galaxy’s disc. The bottom side of the disc is rounded while the top side is somewhat squared-off.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker; CC BY 4.0
Galaxy Messier 51 (M51), also designated NGC 5194, is nicknamed the Whirlpool because of its prominent swirling structure. Its two curving arms, a hallmark of so-called grand-design spiral galaxies, are home to young stars, while its yellow core is where older stars reside.
Many spiral galaxies possess numerous, loosely shaped arms, which make their spiral structure less pronounced. These arms are star-formation factories, compressing hydrogen gas and creating clusters of new stars.
Some astronomers believe that the Whirlpool's arms are so prominent because of the effects of a close encounter with NGC 5195, the smaller, yellowish galaxy at the outermost tip of one of the Whirlpool's arms. At first glance, the compact galaxy appears to be tugging on the arm. Hubble's clear view, however, shows that NGC 5195 is passing behind the Whirlpool. The small galaxy has been gliding past M51 for hundreds of millions of years.
For more information, please visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2005/news-2005-12.html
hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2011/news-2011-03.html
hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2001/news-2001-10.html
hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/1996/news-1996-17.html
Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Description: This image of M101 is a composite of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Spitzer Space Telescope, and Hubble Space Telescope. Sources of X-rays detected by Chandra (colored blue) include million-degree gas, the debris from exploded stars, and material zooming around black holes and neutron stars. Spitzer's view in infrared light (red) highlights the heat emitted by dust lanes in the galaxy where stars can form. Finally, most of the visible light data from Hubble (yellow) come from stars that trace the same spiral structure as the dust lanes.
Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray
Date: 2009
Persistent URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/m101/
Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Gift line: X-ray: NASA/CXC/JHU/K.Kuntz et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/JHU/K. Kuntz et al; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/K. Gordon
Accession number: m101_br_comp
This week, an image of the broad and sweeping spiral galaxy NGC 4731 is the Hubble Picture of the Week. This galaxy lies among the galaxies of the Virgo cluster, in the constellation Virgo, and is located 43 million light-years from Earth. This highly detailed image was created using six different filters. The abundance of colour illustrates the galaxy's billowing clouds of gas, dark dust bands, bright pink star-forming regions and, most obviously, the long, glowing bar with trailing arms.
Barred spiral galaxies outnumber both regular spirals and elliptical galaxies put together, numbering around 60% of all galaxies. The visible bar structure is a result of orbits of stars and gas in the galaxy lining up, forming a dense region that individual stars move in and out of over time. This is the same process that maintains a galaxy's spiral arms, but it is somewhat more mysterious for bars: spiral galaxies seem to form bars in their centres as they mature, accounting for the large number of bars we see today, but can also lose them later on as the accumulated mass along the bar grows unstable. The orbital patterns and the gravitational interactions within a galaxy that sustain the bar also transport matter and energy into it, fuelling star formation. Indeed, the observing programme studying NGC 4731 seeks to investigate this flow of matter in galaxies.
Beyond the bar, the spiral arms of NGC 4731 stretch out far past the confines of this close-in Hubble view. The galaxy’s elongated arms are thought to result from gravitational interactions with other, nearby galaxies in the Virgo cluster.
[Image Description: A close-in view of a barred spiral galaxy. The bright, glowing bar crosses the centre of the galaxy, with spiral arms curving away from its ends and continuing out of view. It’s surrounded by bright patches of light where stars are forming, as well as dark lines of dust. The galaxy’s clouds of gas spread out from the arms and bar, giving way to a dark background with some foreground stars and small, distant galaxies.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker; CC BY 4.0
The graceful winding arms of the grand-design spiral galaxy M51 stretch across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Unlike the menagerie of weird and wonderful spiral galaxies with ragged or disrupted spiral arms, grand-design spiral galaxies boast prominent, well-developed spiral arms like the ones showcased in this image. This galactic portrait was captured by Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI).
In this image the reprocessed stellar light by dust grains and molecules in the medium of the galaxy illuminate a dramatic filamentary medium. Empty cavities and bright filaments alternate and give the impression of ripples propagating from the spiral arms. The yellow compact regions indicate the newly formed star clusters in the galaxy.
M51 — also known as NGC 5194 — lies about 27 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici, and is trapped in a tumultuous relationship with its near neighbour, the dwarf galaxy NGC 5195. The interaction between these two galaxies has made these galactic neighbours one of the better-studied galaxy pairs in the night sky. The gravitational influence of M51’s smaller companion is thought to be partially responsible for the stately nature of the galaxy’s prominent and distinct spiral arms. If you would like to learn more about this squabbling pair of galactic neighbours, you can explore earlier observations of M51 by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope here.
This Webb observation of M51 is one of a series of observations collectively titled Feedback in Emerging extrAgalactic Star clusTers, or FEAST. The FEAST observations were designed to shed light on the interplay between stellar feedback and star formation in environments outside of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Stellar feedback is the term used to describe the outpouring of energy from stars into the environments which form them, and is a crucial process in determining the rates at which stars form. Understanding stellar feedback is vital to building accurate universal models of star formation.
The aim of the FEAST observations is to discover and study stellar nurseries in galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. Before Webb became operative, other observatories such as the Atacama Large Millimetre Array in the Chilean desert and Hubble have given us a glimpse of star formation either at the onset (tracing the dense gas and dust clouds where stars will form) or after the stars have destroyed with their energy their natal gas and dust clouds. Webb is opening a new window into the early stages of star formation and stellar light, as well as the energy reprocessing of gas and dust. Scientists are seeing star clusters emerging from their natal cloud in galaxies beyond our local group for the first time. They will also be able to measure how long it takes for these stars to pollute with newly formed metals and to clean out the gas (these time scales are different from galaxy to galaxy). By studying these processes, we will better understand how the star formation cycle and metal enrichment are regulated within galaxies as well as what are the time scales for planets and brown dwarfs to form. Once dust and gas is removed from the newly formed stars, there is no material left to form planets.
[Image Description: A large spiral galaxy takes up the entirety of the image. The core is mostly bright white, but there are also swirling, detailed structures that resemble water circling a drain. There is white and pale blue light that emanates from stars and dust at the core’s centre, but it is tightly limited to the core. The detailed rings feature bands of deep orange and cloudy grey, which are interspersed by darker empty regions throughout.]
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team
This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of a vast nebula called NGC 604, which lies in the neighboring spiral galaxy M33, located 2.7 million light-years away in the constellation Triangulum. This is a site where new stars are being born in a spiral arm of the galaxy. Though such nebulae are common in galaxies, this one is particularly large, nearly 1,500 light-years across. The nebula is so vast it is easily seen in ground-based telescopic images. At the heart of NGC 604 are over 200 hot stars, much more massive than our Sun (15 to 60 solar masses). They heat the gaseous walls of the nebula making the gas fluoresce. Their light also highlights the nebula's three-dimensional shape, like a lantern in a cavern. By studying the physical structure of a giant nebula, astronomers may determine how clusters of massive stars affect the evolution of the interstellar medium of the galaxy. The nebula also yields clues to its star formation history and will improve understanding of the starburst process when a galaxy undergoes a "firestorm" of star formation. The image was taken on January 17, 1995 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. Separate exposures were taken in different colors of light to study the physical properties of the hot gas (17,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 10,000 degrees Kelvin).
Credit: NASA/ESA and Hui Yang (University of Illinois)
Image Number: PR96-27B
Date: January 17, 1995
Caldwell 48, also known as NGC 2775, is a spiral galaxy. This image of Caldwell 48 combines visible, infrared, and ultraviolet observations taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 in 2019. It features the galaxy’s large, yellowish, central bulge filled with old stars, encircled by tightly wound spiral arms decorated by dark dust and clusters of young, blue stars. Astronomers used Hubble to study young stars in the galaxy’s spiral arms to better understand star formation there.
Caldwell 48 has an apparent magnitude of 11 and is located 67 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer. It was discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1783 and is visible in clear, dark skies using a small telescope. Resolving its spiral arms, however, is incredibly difficult even with a large telescope. The best time of year to observe it is late winter in the Northern Hemisphere or late summer in the Southern Hemisphere.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)
For more information about Hubble’s observations of Caldwell 48, see: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw2026a/
For Hubble's Caldwell catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit:
This is a wide-field view of the spiral galaxy Messier 74 (M74) in the constellation Pisces (about 32 million light years distant). This was photographed on November 15, 2014 using 12 stacked 60-second exposures at ISO 3200. Photo taken in Weatherly, PA. Equipment: Canon 6D, Canon 400mm f/5.6 lens, iOptron ZEQ25GT mount.
This stunning image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy NGC 5643 in the constellation of Lupus (the Wolf). Looking this good isn’t easy; 30 different exposures, for a total of nine hours of observation time, together with the high resolution and clarity of Hubble, were needed to produce an image of such high level of detail and beauty.
NGC 5643 is about 60 million light-years away from Earth and has been the host of a recent supernova event (not visible in this latest image). This supernova (2017cbv) was a specific type in which a white dwarf steals so much mass from a companion star that it becomes unstable and explodes. The explosion releases significant amounts of energy and lights up that part of the galaxy.
The observation was proposed by Adam Riess, who (alongside Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt) was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics in 2011 for his contributions to the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.; acknowledgment: Mahdi Zamani
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2020/hubble-captures-g...
NGC 7640 è una galassia a spirale barrata nella costellazione di Andromeda.
Il suo diametro apparente è di 10.5'x1.8' e la sua magnitudine è 11.3. Dista dalla Terra 29 milioni di anni luce.
La sua struttura a spirale non è così evidente per via dell'angolo di vista con cui si presenta a noi: si osservano comunque alcune distorsioni nella struttura a spirale, indizio di una interazione gravitazionale con una altra galassia.
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NGC 7640 is a barred spiral galaxy in Andromeda constellation. It has apparent diameter of 10.5’x1.8’ and a magnitude 11.3. Its distance from the Earth is 29 million of light years. Its spiral structure is not so evident due to the angle of view: anyway it can be observed some distortion in the galaxy structure, so it is likely that in the past there was a gravitational interaction with another galaxy.
Technical data
Image taken on August 29, September 2/3 2019 from Promiod (Aosta Valley, Italy)
RC12 GSO Truss (diameter 304mm, focal lenght 2432mm)
Mount GM2000 HPSII
CCD Moravian G3-16200 with filters Astrodon Tru-Balance Gen2 E-Serie LRGB
Exposure: L 22x600", R 15x300”, G 15x300", B 15x300”, all in bin2 with sensor temperature -10C
Total exposure 7.4h
Guide with OAG Moravian
The whole imaging session was managed by Voyager sw
Post processing with Pixinsight 1.8 e Photoshop
NASA image releaes Feb 17, 2011
To see a high res still of this spiral galaxy go to: www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/5453113651
This video is a zoom into the majestic disk of stars and dust lanes in the NASA Hubble Space Telescope view of the spiral galaxy NGC 2841, which lies 46 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear).
Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Acknowledgment: M. Crockett and S. Kaviraj (Oxford University, UK), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia), B. Whitmore (STScI), and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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A wealth of galaxies in this view centred on elliptical galaxy M86
from L to R, Arp 120, M86 and M84 form the lower right hand section of Markarian's chain, a visual string of galaxies - my field of view was too small (49 arcmins) to include them all.
Going around the clock:
At 1200 is spiral galaxy NGC 4402
At 0330 is elliptical galaxy M84
At 0400 is elliptical galaxy NGC 4387
At 0530 is spiral galaxy NGC 4388
At 0630 is barred spiral galaxy NGC 4413
At 0800 is spiral galaxy NGC 4425
At 1130 near the very top is a small irregular galaxy IC 3355
At 1100 are "the Eyes" a pair of interacting galaxies (NGC 4435 and NGC 4438)(Arp 120). Gravitational interaction has distorted one of the pair.
38 x 5 minute exposures. Dithered and drizzled.
Takahashi 150mm refractor
SBIG ST-4000XCM One Shot Color CCD camera
Mount: Paramount GTS
Field of view 49 x 49 arcminutes
Post-processing in PixInsight and Photoshop CC.
During my wide field imaging session on March 29, 2016 of the Messier pair M108 (Surfboard Galaxy) and M97 (Owl Nebula), I also caught a view of NGC 3631 in the lower right corner of the view. After zooming in on the galaxy, I noticed a bright star in one of the spiral arms, further investigation showed that this was, in fact, a supernova, SN2016bau, discovered on March 3, 2016 by Ron Arbour.
The wide field unprocessed image (available to view on my blog) shows the stacked, full frame, 10-minute exposure using a Canon 6D and Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM lens mounted on an iOptron ZEQ25 mount. 10 x 60 seconds at ISO 3200, stacked in DeepSkyStacker and further processed in Adobe Lightroom and ImagesPlus.
The clipped, zoomed and enlarged image is from the full frame view. I used a reference image of galaxy NGC 3631 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to show the galaxy without the supernova. The spiral galaxy is about 50 million light year away.
This glittering image shows the spiral galaxy IC 5332, which lies about 30 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor, and has an almost face-on orientation to Earth. To explain what is meant by ‘face-on’, it is helpful to visualise a spiral galaxy as an (extremely) large disc. If the galaxy is oriented so that it appears circular and disc-shaped from our perspective here on Earth, then we can say that it is ‘face-on’. In contrast, if it is oriented so that it appears squashed and oval-shaped, then we would say that it is ‘edge-on’. The key thing is that the same galaxy would look extremely different from our perspective depending on whether it was face-on or edge-on as seen from Earth. Check out these previous Hubble Pictures of the Week for examples of another face-on spiral galaxy and an almost edge-on spiral galaxy.
IC 5332 is designated as an SABc-type galaxy in the De Vaucouleurs system of galaxy classification. The ‘S’ is straightforward, identifying it as a spiral galaxy, which it clearly is, given the well-defined arms of bright stars and darker dust that curl outwards from the galaxy’s dense and bright core. The ‘AB’ is a little more complex. It means that the galaxy is weakly barred, which refers to the shape of the galaxy’s centre. The majority of spiral galaxies do not spiral out from a single point, but rather from an elongated bar-type structure. SAB galaxies — which are also known as intermediate spiral galaxies — do not have a clear bar-shape at their core, but also do not spiral out from a single point, instead falling somewhere in between. The lowercase ‘c’ describes how tightly wound the spiral arms are: ‘a’ would indicate very tightly wound, and ‘d’ very loosely wound. Thus, IC 5332 is quite an intermediate spiral galaxy on many fronts: weakly barred, with quite loosely wound arms, and almost completely face-on!
[Image Description: A close-in view of a spiral galaxy. It is seen face-on, showing its circular shape and tightly winding spiral arms. The galaxy glows brightly in the centre and dims to cool colours towards the edge. Dark, faint filaments of dust and brightly glowing, pink and orange bubbles of star formation mark the face of the galaxy.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST team; CC BY 4.0
Editor's note: this is an unannotated image from this fully overlaid image: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/mini_black_...
Main caption: One of the lowest mass supermassive black holes ever observed in the middle of a galaxy has been identified, thanks to NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and several other observatories. The host galaxy is of a type not expected to harbor supermassive black holes, suggesting that this black hole, while related to its supermassive cousins, may have a different origin.
The black hole is located in the middle of the spiral galaxy NGC 4178, shown in this image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The inset shows an X-ray source at the position of the black hole, in the center of a Chandra image. An analysis of the Chandra data, along with infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and radio data from the NSF's Very Large Array suggests that the black hole is near the extreme low-mass end of the supermassive black hole range.
These results were published in the July 1, 2012 issue of The Astrophysical Journal by Nathan Secrest, from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and collaborators.
The properties of the X-ray source, including its brightness and spectrum - the amount of X-rays at different wavelengths - and its brightness at infrared wavelengths, suggest that a black hole in the center of NGC 4178 is rapidly pulling in material from its surroundings. The same data also suggest that light generated by this infalling material is heavily absorbed by gas and dust surrounding the black hole.
A known relationship between the mass of a black hole and the amount of X-rays and radio waves it generates was used to estimate the mass of the black hole. This method gives a black hole mass estimate of less than about 200,000 times that of the sun. This agrees with mass estimates from several other methods employed by the authors, and is lower than the typical values for supermassive black holes of millions to billions of times the mass of the sun.
NGC 4178 is a spiral galaxy located about 55 million light years from Earth. It does not contain a bright central concentration, or bulge, of stars in its center. Besides NGC 4178, four other galaxies without bulges are currently thought to contain supermassive black holes. Of these four black holes, two have masses that may be close to that of the black hole in NGC 4178. XMM-Newton observations of an X-ray source discovered by Chandra in the center of the galaxy NGC 4561 indicate that the mass of this black hole is greater than 20,000 times the mass of the sun, but the mass could be substantially higher if the black hole is pulling in material slowly, causing it to generate less X-ray emission. A paper describing these results was published in the October 1st, 2012 issue of The Astrophysical Journal by Araya Salvo and collaborators.
The mass of the black hole in the galaxy NGC 4395 is estimated to be about 360,000 times the mass of the sun, as published by Peterson and collaborators in the October 20, 2005 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/ngc4178/
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/George Mason Univ/N.Secrest et al; Optical: SDSS
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
This Hubble Picture of the week features NGC 1672, a barred spiral galaxy located 49 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Dorado. This galaxy is a multi-talented light show, showing off an impressive array of different celestial lights. Like any spiral galaxy, its disc is filled with billions of shining stars that give it a beautiful glow. Along its two large arms, bubbles of hydrogen gas are made to shine a striking red light by the powerful radiation of newly-forming stars within. Near to the centre lie some particularly spectacular stars; newly-formed and extremely hot, they are embedded in a ring of hot gas and are emitting powerful X-rays. And in the very centre sits an even more brilliant source of X-rays, an active galactic nucleus created by the heated accretion disc around NGC 1672’s supermassive black hole; this makes NGC 1672 a Seyfert galaxy.
But a highlight of this image is the most fleeting and temporary of these lights: supernova SN 2017GAX, visible in just one of the six Hubble images that make up this composite image. This was a Type I supernova caused by the core-collapse and subsequent explosion of a giant star, going from invisibility to a new light in the sky in just a matter of days. In that image from later that year, the supernova is already fading, and so is only just visible here as a small green dot, just below the crook of the spiral arm on the right side. In fact this was on purpose, as astronomers wanted to look for any companion star that the supernova progenitor may have had — something impossible to spot beside a live supernova! Look for it as a small green dot, just below the crook of the spiral arm on the right side. If you can't find it, try looking at this collage.
Recently, NGC 1672 was also among a crop of galaxies imaged with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, showing the ring of gas and the structure of dust in its spiral arms. A Hubble image was also released previously in 2007.
[Image Description: A spiral galaxy with an oval-shaped disc. Two large arms curve out away from the ends of the disc. The arms are traced by bright pink patches where stars are forming and by dark reddish threads of dust. The core is very bright and star-filled. Some large stars appear in front of the galaxy. Directly under the point where the right arm joins the disc, a fading supernova is visible as a green dot.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, O. Fox, L. Jenkins, S. Van Dyk, A. Filippenko, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, D. de Martin (ESA/Hubble), M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble); CC BY 4.0
This image features the spiral galaxy NGC 691, imaged in fantastic detail using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). This galaxy is a member of the NGC 691 galaxy group named after it, which features a group of gravitationally bound galaxies that lie about 120 million light-years from Earth.
Hubble observes objects such as NGC 691 using a range of filters. Each filter only allows certain wavelengths of light to reach Hubble’s WFC3. The resulting filtered images are colored by specialists who make informed choices about which color best corresponds to the wavelengths of light from the astronomical object that are transmitted by each filter. Combining the colored images from individual filters creates a full-color image. This detailed process provides us with remarkably good insight into the nature and appearance of these objects.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.; Acknowledgment: M. Zamani
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-images-a-g...
A photogenic and favorite target for amateur astronomers, the full beauty of nearby spiral galaxy M83, also known as the Southern Pinwheel, is unveiled in all of its glory in this Hubble Space Telescope mosaic image. The vibrant magentas and blues reveal the galaxy is ablaze with star formation.
Hubble captures thousands of star clusters, hundreds of thousands of individual stars, and "ghosts" of dead stars called supernova remnants. The galactic panorama unveils a tapestry of the drama of stellar birth and death spread across 50,000 light-years.
The newest generations of stars are forming largely in clusters on the edges of the dark spiral dust lanes. These brilliant young stellar groupings, only a few million years old, produce huge amounts of ultraviolet light that is absorbed by surrounding diffuse gas clouds, causing them to glow in pinkish hydrogen light.
Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2014/news-2014-04.html
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope recently imaged the Sombrero galaxy with its MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), resolving the clumpy nature of the dust along the galaxy’s outer ring.
The mid-infrared light highlights the gas and dust that are part of star formation taking place among the Sombrero galaxy’s outer disk. The rings of the Sombrero galaxy produce less than one solar mass of stars per year, in comparison to the Milky Way’s roughly two solar masses a year. It’s not a particular hotbed of star formation.
The Sombrero galaxy is around 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
[Image description: Image of a galaxy on the black background of space. The galaxy is a very oblong, blue disk that extends from left to right at an angle (from about 10 o’clock to 5 o’clock). The galaxy has a small bright core at the centre. There is an inner disk that is clearer, with speckles of stars scattered throughout. The outer disk of the galaxy is whiteish-blue, and clumpy, like clouds in the sky. There are different coloured dots, distant galaxies, speckled among the black background of space surrounding the galaxy.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; CC BY 4.0
This image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 5037 in the constellation of Virgo. First documented by William Herschel in 1785, the galaxy lies about 150 million light-years away from Earth. Despite this distance, we can see the delicate structures of gas and dust within the galaxy in extraordinary detail. This detail is possible using the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), whose combined exposures created this image.
WFC3 is a very versatile camera, as it can collect ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light, thereby providing a wealth of information about the objects it observes.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Rosario
Acknowledgement: L. Shatz
For more information, visit: esahubble.org/images/potw2121a/
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the interacting galaxy pair Arp 273, popularly called the “Rose.”
The larger of the spiral galaxies, known to astronomers as UGC 1810, has a disk that is distorted into a blossom-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy UGC 1813 (the Rose’s “stem”) below it. A swath of blue jewels across the top of UGC 1810 is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot, young, blue stars. The galaxy’s outer arm — appearing as a partial ring — suggests that the smaller companion galaxy actually dived deep, but off-center, through UGC 1810.
The “stem” galaxy, UGC 1813, is oriented nearly edge-on to Earth and shows distinct signs of intense star formation at its nucleus, perhaps triggered by the encounter with UGC 1810.
This image was taken in celebration of Hubble's 21st anniversary in 2011.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2011/news-2011-11.html
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Captured from the Utah Desert Remote Observatory in December 2023.
Total integration time: 30 minutes (12 x 150 seconds) using a ZWO CMOS color camera.
This image features the spiral galaxy NGC 691, imaged in fantastic detail using the Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy is a member of the NGC 691 galaxy group named after it, which features a group of gravitationally bound galaxies that lie about 120 million light-years from Earth.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.
Acknowledgement: M. Zamani
For more information, visit: esahubble.org/images/potw2122a/
Working with astronomical image processors at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., renowned astrophotographer Robert Gendler has taken science data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archive and combined it with his own ground-based observations to assemble a photo illustration of the magnificent spiral galaxy M106.
Gendler retrieved archival Hubble images of M106 to assemble a mosaic of the center of the galaxy. He then used his own and fellow astrophotographer Jay GaBany's observations of M106 to combine with the Hubble data in areas where there was less coverage, and finally, to fill in the holes and gaps where no Hubble data existed.
The center of the galaxy is composed almost entirely of HST data taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, Wide Field Camera 3, and Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 detectors. The outer spiral arms are predominantly HST data colorized with ground-based data taken by Gendler's and GaBany's 12.5-inch and 20-inch telescopes, located at very dark remote sites in New Mexico. The image also reveals the optical component of the "anomalous arms" of M106, seen here as red, glowing hydrogen emission.
This portrait of M106 contains only the inner structure around the halo and nucleus of this Seyfert II active galaxy. Large amounts of gas from the galaxy are thought to be falling into and fueling a supermassive black hole contained in the nucleus. Also known as NGC 4258, M106 lies 23.5 million light-years away, in the constellation Canes Venatici.
This image features the spiral galaxy NGC 941, which lies about 55 million light-years from Earth. The data used for this image were collected by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The beautiful NGC 941 is undoubtedly the main attraction in this image; however, this hazy-looking galaxy was not the motivation for the data being collected. That distinction belongs to an astronomical event that took place in the galaxy years before: the supernova SN 2005ad. The location of this faded supernova was observed as part of a study of multiple hydrogen-rich supernovae, also known as type II supernovae, in order to better understand the environments in which certain types of supernovae take place. Whilst the study was conducted by professional astronomers, SN 2005ad itself owes its discovery to a distinguished amateur astronomer named Kōichi Itagaki, who has discovered over 170 supernovae.
This might raise the question of how an amateur astronomer could spot something like a supernova event before professional astronomers — who have access to telescopes such as Hubble. The answer is in part that the detection of supernovae is a mixture of skill, facilities and luck. Most astronomical events happen over time spans that dwarf human lifetimes, but supernova explosions are extraordinarily fast, appearing very suddenly and then brightening and dimming over a period of days or weeks. Another aspect is that professional astronomers often do not spend that much time actually observing. There is a great deal of competition for time on telescopes such as Hubble, and then data from a few hours of observations might take weeks, months, or sometimes even years to process and analyse to their full potential. Amateur astronomers can spend much more time actually observing the skies, and sometimes have extremely impressive systems of telescopes, computers and software that they can put to use.
So many supernovae are spotted by skilful amateurs such as Itagaki that there is actually an online system set up for reporting them (the Transient Name Server). This is a big help to professional astronomers, because with supernova events time is truly of the essence. After the discovery of SN 2005ab was reported, professional astronomers were able to follow up with spectroscopic studies and confirm it as a type II supernova, which eventually led to its location being included in this study with Hubble. Such a study wouldn’t be possible without a rich library of previous supernovae, built with the keen eyes of amateur astronomers.
[Image Description: A spiral galaxy, seen face-on from Earth. The spiral arms of the galaxy are bright but not well defined, merging into a swirling disc with a faint halo of dimmer gas around it. The core glows brightly in a lighter colour and has a bit of faint dust crossing it. Two redder, visually smaller galaxies and a bright star are prominent around the galaxy, with more tiny objects in the background.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick; CC BY 4.0
In this collage two images of the spiral galaxy NGC 1672 are compared: one showing supernova SN 2017GAX as a small green dot, and the other without. The difference between the images is that both have been created by processing multiple individual Hubble images, each taken to capture a specific wavelength of visible light, and combining them to make a full-colour image. In one of those filtered frames, taken in 2017, the fading supernova is still visible; the second image does not use that frame, instead using some older Hubble data. The result is this spot-the-difference game - a game that astronomers have to play to see supernovae in the first place, and they don’t get a guide!
[Image Description: Two images of a spiral galaxy with an oval-shaped disc. It has a bright core and two large arms, containing bright pink patches where stars are forming and dark reddish threads of dust. The top image is labelled "2005". The bottom image is labelled "2017", and a greenish point on the disc's left side is circled and labelled "SN2017 GAX".]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, O. Fox, L. Jenkins, S. Van Dyk, A. Filippenko, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, D. de Martin (ESA/Hubble), M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble); CC BY 4.0
The Whirlpool Galaxy, Messier 51 (M51), or NGC 5194, is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici (just below the last star in the handle of the Big Dipper asterism). M51 is roughly 23 million light-years away from Earth.
Observation data (J2000 epoch)
Constellation: Canes Venatici
Right ascension: 13h 29m 52.7s
Declination: +47° 11′ 43″
Distance: 23 Mly
Apparent magnitude (V): 8.4
Tech Specs: Orion 8" f/8 Ritchey-Chretien Astrograph Telescope, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ASI071MC-Pro, ZWO AAPlus, ZWO EAF, 180 x 60 seconds at -10C, processed using DeepSkyStacker and PixInsight. Image Date: April 10, 2023. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W95), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
The Fireworks Galaxy (also known as NGC 6946 and Caldwell 12) with the open star cluster NGC 6939 above it. It was a lovely clear night with good seeing and a setting waxing crescent Moon so, although it wasn't fully dark (because at this time of year at our location the Sun doesn't go further than 18° below the horizon) we thought we'd go for a more challenging target. NGC 6946 is a challenge to image because it is heavily obscured by interstellar matter due to its location close to the galactic plane of the Milky Way, with a dimming of ~1.5 magnitudes. However, over 3 hours of exposure helped to make this a much smoother image than previous attempts have yielded. NGC 6946 is a good target to return to regularly because 10 supernovae have been observed there in the last century, which is why it was named Fireworks Galaxy (on average a supernova occurs in a galaxy about once a century). The most recent supernova spotted there was in May 2017. NGC 6946 is a face-on intermediate spiral galaxy with a small bright nucleus, whose location in the sky straddles the boundary between the northern constellations of Cepheus and Cygnus. Its distance from Earth is about 25.2 million light-years. Due to its prodigious star formation, it has been classified as an active starburst galaxy. With a diameter estimated to be about 40,000 light years, NGC 6946 is approximately one-third the size of Milky Way with half the number of stars.
NGC 6939 is an open cluster in the constellation Cepheus. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1798. The cluster lies 2/3° northwest from the Fireworks Galaxy. It is approximately 4.000 light years away and it is over a billion years old.
038 x 300 second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -20°C
050 x dark frames
040 x flat frames
100 x bias frames (subtracted from flat frames)
Binning 1x1
Total integration time = 3 hours and 10 minutes
Captured with APT
Guided with PHD2
Processed in Nebulosity and Photoshop
Equipment:
Telescope: Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS
Mount: Skywatcher EQ5
Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Mini
Guiding Camera: ZWO ASI120MC
Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI1600MC Pro
Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector
Light pollution filter
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 1032.
Original caption: Resembling a wizard’s staff set aglow, NGC 1032 cleaves the quiet darkness of space in two in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 1032 is located about a hundred million light years away in the constellation Cetus (The Sea Monster). Although beautiful, this image perhaps does not do justice to the galaxy’s true aesthetic appeal: NGC 1032 is actually a spectacular spiral galaxy, but from Earth, the galaxy’s vast disc of gas, dust and stars is seen nearly edge-on. A handful of other galaxies can be seen lurking in the background, scattered around the narrow stripe of NGC 1032. Many are oriented face-on or at tilted angles, showing off their glamorous spiral arms and bright cores. Such orientations provide a wealth of detail about the arms and their nuclei, but fully understanding a galaxy’s three-dimensional structure also requires an edge-on view. This gives astronomers an overall idea of how stars are distributed throughout the galaxy and allows them to measure the “height” of the disc and the bright star-studded core.
NGC 2841 is an unbarred spiral galaxy in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. J. L. E. Dreyer, the author of the New General Catalog, described it as, "very bright, large, very much extended 151°, very suddenly much brighter middle equal to 10th magnitude star". Initially thought to be about 30 million light-years distant, a 2001 Hubble Space Telescope survey of the galaxy's Cepheid variables determined its distance to be approximately 46 million light-years. (Wikipedia)
Observation data (J2000 epoch)
Constellation: Ursa Major
Right ascension: 09h 22m 02.655s
Declination: +50° 58′ 35.32″
Distance: 46.0 ± 4.9 Mly
Apparent magnitude (V): 10.1
Tech Specs: Orion 8” RC Telescope, ZWO ASI2600MC camera running at -10F, 355 x 60 seconds (5 hours and 55 minutes), Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in DSS and PixInsight. Image Date: February 4, 2024. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
The barred spiral galaxy known as NGC 4907 shows its starry face from 270 million light-years away to anyone who can see it from the Northern Hemisphere. This is a new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the face-on galaxy, displaying its beautiful spiral arms, wound loosely around its central bright bar of stars.
Shining brightly below the galaxy is a star that is actually within our own Milky Way galaxy. This star appears much brighter than the billions of stars in NGC 4907 as it is 100,000 times closer, residing only 2,500 light-years away.
NGC 4907 is also part of the Coma Cluster, a group of over 1,000 galaxies, some of which can be seen around NGC 4907 in this image. This massive cluster of galaxies lies within the constellation of Coma Berenices, which is named for the locks of Queen Berenice II of Egypt: the only constellation named after a historical person.
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2020/hubble-sees-near-...
Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gregg
This image from the Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy Mrk (Markarian) 1337, which is roughly 120 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo. Hubble snapped Mrk 1337 at a wide range of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelengths, producing this richly detailed image. Mrk 1337 is a weakly barred spiral galaxy, which as the name suggests means that the spiral arms radiate from a central bar of gas and stars. Bars occur in roughly half of spiral galaxies, including our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
These observations are part of a campaign to improve our knowledge of how fast the universe is expanding. They were proposed by Adam Riess, who – along with Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt – was awarded a 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for contributions to the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.
For more information, visit: esahubble.org/images/potw2145a/
NGC 6946, sometimes referred to as the Fireworks Galaxy, is a face-on intermediate spiral galaxy with a small bright nucleus, whose location in the sky straddles the boundary between the northern constellations of Cepheus and Cygnus. Its distance from Earth is about 25.2 million light-years. NGC 6939 is an open cluster and is located 4,000 light-years from our solar system. This is a two panel mosaic image, each panel was 81 minutes of exposure time.
NGC 6946 also appears in Arps Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as ARP 29. It was placed in the “Peculiar Galaxy” category since it has one spiral arm that is larger than the others.
Tech Specs: Sky-Watcher Esprit 120ED Telescope, ZWO ASI2600MC camera running at 0F, two panel, each panel 81x60 seconds guided exposures, Sky-Watcher EQ6R-Pro pier mounted, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in DSS and PixInsight. Image Date: May 26, 2023. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
Over fifty years ago, a supernova was discovered in M83, a spiral galaxy about 15 million light years from Earth. Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to make the first detection of X-rays emitted by the debris from this explosion.
Named SN 1957D because it was the fourth supernova to be discovered in the year of 1957, it is one of only a few located outside of the Milky Way galaxy that is detectable, in both radio and optical wavelengths, decades after its explosion was observed. In 1981, astronomers saw the remnant of the exploded star in radio waves, and then in 1987 they detected the remnant at optical wavelengths, years after the light from the explosion itself became undetectable.
A relatively short observation -- about 14 hours long -- from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2000 and 2001 did not detect any X-rays from the remnant of SN 1957D. However, a much longer observation obtained in 2010 and 2011, totaling nearly 8 and 1/2 days of Chandra time, did reveal the presence of X-ray emission. The X-ray brightness in 2000 and 2001 was about the same as or lower than in this deep image.
This new Chandra image of M83 is one of the deepest X-ray observations ever made of a spiral galaxy beyond our own. This full-field view of the spiral galaxy shows the low, medium, and high-energy X-rays observed by Chandra in red, green, and blue respectively.
The new X-ray data from the remnant of SN 1957D provide important information about the nature of this explosion that astronomers think happened when a massive star ran out of fuel and collapsed. The distribution of X-rays with energy suggests that SN 1957D contains a neutron star, a rapidly spinning, dense star formed when the core of pre-supernova star collapsed. This neutron star, or pulsar, may be producing a cocoon of charged particles moving at close to the speed of light known as a pulsar wind nebula.
If this interpretation is confirmed, the pulsar in SN 1957D is observed at an age of 55 years, one of the youngest pulsars ever seen. The remnant of SN 1979C in the galaxy M100 contains another candidate for the youngest pulsar, but astronomers are still unsure whether there is a black hole or a pulsar at the center of SN 1979C.
These results will appear in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The researchers involved with this study were Knox Long (Space Telescope Science Institute), William Blair (Johns Hopkins University), Leith Godfrey (Curtin University, Australia), Kip Kuntz (Johns Hopkins), Paul Plucinsky (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), Roberto Soria (Curtin University), Christopher Stockdale (University of Oklahoma and the Australian Astronomical Observatory), Bradley Whitmore (Space Telescope Science Institute), and Frank Winkler (Middlebury College).
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/m83sn/
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/STScI/K.Long et al., Optical: NASA/STScI
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
_____________________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the smooth-looking barred spiral galaxy NGC 3895. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: Far away in the Ursa Major constellation is a swirling galaxy that would not look out of place on a coffee made by a starry-eyed barista. NGC 3895 is a barred spiral galaxy that was first spotted by William Herschel in 1790 and was later observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble's orbit high above the Earth's distorting atmosphere allows astronomers to make the very high resolution observations that are essential to opening new windows on planets, stars and galaxies — such as this beautiful view of NGC 3895. The telescope is positioned approximately 570 km above the ground, where it whirls around Earth at 28 000 kilometres per hour and takes 96 minutes to complete one orbit.
An orange glow radiates from the center of NGC 1792, the heart of this stellar furnace. Captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, this intimate view of NGC 1792 gives us some insight into this galactic powerhouse. The vast swathes of tell-tale blue seen throughout the galaxy indicate areas that are full of young, hot stars, and it is in the shades of orange, seen nearer the center, that the older, cooler stars reside.
Nestled in the constellation of Columba (The Dove), NGC 1792 is both a spiral galaxy and a starburst galaxy. Within starburst galaxies, stars are forming at comparatively exorbitant rates. The rate of star formation can be more than 10 times faster in a starburst galaxy than in our galaxy, the Milky Way. When galaxies have a large reservoir of gas, like NGC 1792, these short-lived starburst phases can be sparked by galactic events such as mergers and tidal interactions. One might think that these starburst galaxies would easily consume all of their gas in a large forming event. However, supernova explosions and intense stellar winds produced in these powerful starbursts can inject energy into the gas and disperse it. This halts the star formation before it can completely deplete the galaxy of all its fuel. Scientists are actively working to understand this complex interplay between the dynamics that drive and quench these fierce bursts of star formation.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee; Acknowledgement: Leo Shatz
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-sees-a-ste...
The spiral pattern shown by the galaxy in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is striking because of its delicate, feathery nature. These "flocculent" spiral arms indicate that the recent history of star formation of the galaxy, known as NGC 2775, has been relatively quiet. There is virtually no star formation in the central part of the galaxy, which is dominated by an unusually large and relatively empty galactic bulge, where all the gas was converted into stars long ago.
NGC 2275 is classified as a flocculent (or fluffy-looking) spiral galaxy, located 67 million light-years away in the constellation of Cancer.
Millions of bright, young, blue stars shine in the complex, feather-like spiral arms, interlaced with dark lanes of dust. Complexes of these hot, blue stars are thought to trigger star formation in nearby gas clouds. The overall feather-like spiral patterns of the arms are then formed by shearing of the gas clouds as the galaxy rotates. The spiral nature of flocculent galaxies stands in contrast to the grand-design spirals, which have prominent, well defined-spiral arms.
For more information, visit www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2020/hubble-spots-feat....
Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)
Website: |Bruce Wayne Photography|
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Another attempt at capturing our beautiful Milky Way. The first in a two part series that I will be posting here on Flickr.
About the Photo:
Was taken at a friend’s house up in Vermont a few weekends ago. It was a frosty 11 F or -11C, but totally worth the time shooting.
Canon 7D
10mm
Aperture: f /4
ISO: 6400
Shutter Speed: 59 sec
Equipment: Manfrotto 055CX, 410 Jr. Gear Head, RC-1 remote.
***All Rights are Reserved***
The spiral pattern shown by the galaxy in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope is striking because of its delicate, feathery nature. These "flocculent" spiral arms indicate that the recent history of star formation of the galaxy, known as NGC 2775, has been relatively quiet. There is virtually no star formation in the central part of the galaxy, which is dominated by an unusually large and relatively empty galactic bulge, where all the gas was converted into stars long ago.
Millions of bright, young, blue stars shine in the complex, feather-like spiral arms, interlaced with dark lanes of dust. Complexes of these hot, blue stars are thought to trigger star formation in nearby gas clouds. The overall feather-like spiral patterns of the arms are then formed by shearing of the gas clouds as the galaxy rotates. Flocculent spirals stand in contrast to grand design spirals, which have prominent, well defined-spiral arms.
For more information, visit: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw2026a/
Credit: SA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team
Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)
Editor's note: I just saw this great image -- it's the false-color X-ray only view from the Chandra photo released on 4/30/12: www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/7129105247/in/photostream. Very pretty in pink! This is also rotated from the original orientation. I've added a note to show where the black hole lurks...
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered an extraordinary outburst by a black hole in the spiral galaxy M83, located about 15 million light years from Earth. Using Chandra, astronomers found a new ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX), objects that give off more X-rays than most "normal" binary systems in which a companion star is in orbit around a neutron star or black hole.
On the left is an optical image of M83 from the Very Large Telescope in Chile, operated by the European Southern Observatory. On the right is a composite image showing X-ray data from Chandra in pink and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope in blue and yellow. The ULX is located near the bottom of the composite image.
In Chandra observations that spanned several years, the ULX in M83 increased in X-ray brightness by at least 3,000 times. This sudden brightening is one of the largest changes in X-rays ever seen for this type of object, which do not usually show dormant periods.
Optical images reveal a bright blue source at the position of the ULX during the X-ray outburst. Before the outburst the blue source is not seen. These results imply that the companion to the black hole in M83 is a red giant star, more than about 500 million years old, with a mass less than about four times the Sun's. According to theoretical models for the evolution of stars, the black hole should be almost as old as its companion.
Astronomers think that the bright, blue optical emission seen during the X-ray outburst must have been caused by a disk surrounding the black hole that brightened dramatically as it gained more material from the companion star.
Another highly variable ULX with an old, red star as a companion to a black hole was found recently in M31. The new ULXs in M83 and M31 provide direct evidence for a population of black holes that are much older and more volatile than those usually considered to be found in these objects.
The researchers estimate a mass range for the M83 ULX from 40 to 100 times that of the Sun. Lower masses of about 15 times the mass of the Sun are possible, but only if the ULX is producing more X-rays than predicted by standard models of how material falls onto black holes.
Evidence was also found that the black hole in this system may have formed from a star surprisingly rich in "metals", as astronomers call elements heavier than helium. The ULX is located in a region that is known, from previous observations, to be rich with metals.
Large numbers of metals increase the mass-loss rate for massive stars, decreasing their mass before they collapse. This, in turn, decreases the mass of the resulting black hole. Theoretical models suggest that with a high metal content only black holes with masses less than about 15 times that of the Sun should form. Therefore, these results may challenge these models.
This surprisingly rich "recipe" for a black hole is not the only possible explanation. It may also be that the black hole is so old that it formed at a time when heavy elements were much less abundant in M83, before seeding by later generations of supernovas. Another explanation is that the mass of the black hole is only about 15 times that of the sun.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/m83/
Credit: Left image - Optical: ESO/VLT; Close-up - X-ray: NASA/CXC/Curtin University/R.Soria et al., Optical: NASA/STScI/Middlebury College/F.Winkler et al.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/m83/
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
_____________________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Looking deep into the universe, the Hubble Space Telescope catches a glimpse of the numerous arm-like structures that sweep around this barred spiral galaxy, known as NGC 2608. Appearing as a slightly stretched, smaller version of our Milky Way, the peppered blue and red spiral arms are anchored together by the prominent horizontal central bar of the galaxy.
In Hubble photos, bright Milky Way stars will sometimes appear as pinpoints of light with prominent spikes. A star with these features is seen in the lower right corner of the image, and another can be spotted just above the pale center of the galaxy.
The majority of the fainter points around NGC 2608 are thousands of distant galaxies.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.
For more information, visit: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw2023a/
Most galaxies we are familiar with fall into one of two easily-identified types. Spiral galaxies are young and energetic, filled with the gas needed to form new stars and sporting spiral arms hosting hot, bright stars. Elliptical galaxies have a much more pedestrian look, their light coming from a uniform population of older and redder stars. But other galaxies require in-depth study to understand: such is the case with NGC 4694, a galaxy located 54 million light-years from Earth in the Virgo galaxy cluster, and the subject of this Hubble Picture of the Week.
NGC 4694 has a smooth-looking, armless disc which — like an elliptical galaxy — is nearly devoid of star formation. However its stellar population is still relatively young and new stars are still actively forming in its core, powering the brightness we can see in this image and giving it a markedly different stellar profile from that of a classic elliptical galaxy. The galaxy is also suffused by the kinds of gas and dust normally seen in a young and sprightly spiral; elliptical galaxies often do host significant quantities of dust, but not the gas needed to form new stars. NGC 4694 is surrounded by a huge cloud of invisible hydrogen gas, fuel for star formation. This stellar activity is the reason for Hubble’s observations here.
As this Hubble image shows, the dust in this galaxy forms chaotic structures that indicate some kind of disturbance. It turns out that the cloud of hydrogen gas around NGC 4694 forms a long bridge to a nearby, faint dwarf galaxy named VCC 2062. The two galaxies have undergone a violent collision, and the larger NGC 4694 is accreting gas from the smaller galaxy. Based on its peculiar shape and its star-forming activity, NGC 4694 has been classified as a lenticular galaxy: lacking the unmistakable arms of a spiral, but not so bereft of gas as an elliptical galaxy, and still with a galactic bulge and disc. Some galaxies just aren’t so easy to classify as one type or the other!
[Image Description: An oval-shaped galaxy seen tilted at an angle. It glows brightly at its central point, with the radiated light dimming out to the edge of the oval. Reddish-brown, patchy dust spreads out from the core and covers much of the galaxy’s top half, as well as the outer edge, obscuring some of its light. Stars can be seen around and in front of the galaxy.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker; CC BY 4.0
This image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope features NGC 7678 – a galaxy with one particularly prominent arm, located approximately 164 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus (the Winged Horse). With a diameter of around 115,000 light-years, this bright spiral galaxy is a similar size to our own galaxy (the Milky Way) and was discovered in 1784 by the German-British astronomer William Herschel.
The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies is a catalog which was produced in 1966 by the American astronomer Halton Arp. NGC 7678 is among the 338 galaxies presented in this catalog, which organizes peculiar galaxies according to their unusual features. Cataloged here as Arp 28, this galaxy is listed together with six others in the group “spiral galaxies with one heavy arm.”
This image also features several stars that are much closer than NGC 7678. The bright stars are marked by "diffraction spikes," caused by light reflecting off Hubble's structure.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.
For more information, visit: esahubble.org/images/potw2112a/
This image, taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, features the spiral galaxy NGC 4680. Two other galaxies, at the far right and bottom center of the image, flank NGC 4680. NGC 4680 enjoyed a wave of attention in 1997, as it played host to a supernova explosion known as SN 1997bp. Australian amateur astronomer Robert Evans identified the supernova and has identified an extraordinary 42 supernova explosions.
NGC 4680 is actually a rather tricky galaxy to classify. It is sometimes referred to as a spiral galaxy, but it is also sometimes classified as a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies fall somewhere in between spiral galaxies and elliptical galaxies. While NGC 4680 does have distinguishable spiral arms, they are not clearly defined, and the tip of one arm appears very diffuse. Galaxies are not static, and their morphologies (and therefore their classifications) vary throughout their lifetimes. Spiral galaxies are thought to evolve into elliptical galaxies, most likely by merging with one another, causing them to lose their distinctive spiral structures.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-sees-a-spi...
This image from the Hubble Space Telescope showcases an edge-on view of the majestic spiral galaxy UGC 11537. Hubble captured the tightly wound spiral arms swirling around the heart of UGC 11537 at infrared and visible wavelengths, showing both the bright bands of stars and the dark clouds of dust threading throughout the galaxy.
UGC 11537 is 230 million light-years away in the constellation Aquila, and lies close to the plane of the Milky Way. Being so close to the starry band of the Milky Way means that foreground stars from our own galaxy have crept into the image. The two prominent stars in front of UGC 11537 are interlopers from within the Milky Way. These bright foreground stars are surrounded by diffraction spikes, imaging artifacts caused by starlight interacting with Hubble's inner structure.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Seth
For more information, visit: esahubble.org/images/potw2146a/
The graceful winding arms of the grand-design spiral galaxy M51 stretch across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Unlike the menagerie of weird and wonderful spiral galaxies with ragged or disrupted spiral arms, grand-design spiral galaxies boast prominent, well-developed spiral arms like the ones showcased in this image. This galactic portrait is a composite image that integrates data from Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI).
In this image the dark red regions trace the filamentary warm dust permeating the medium of the galaxy. The red regions show the reprocessed light from complex molecules forming on dust grains, while colours of orange and yellow reveal the regions of ionised gas by the recently formed star clusters. Stellar feedback has a dramatic effect on the medium of the galaxy and create complex network of bright knots as well as cavernous black bubbles.
M51 — also known as NGC 5194 — lies about 27 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici, and is trapped in a tumultuous relationship with its near neighbour, the dwarf galaxy NGC 5195. The interaction between these two galaxies has made these galactic neighbours one of the better-studied galaxy pairs in the night sky. The gravitational influence of M51’s smaller companion is thought to be partially responsible for the stately nature of the galaxy’s prominent and distinct spiral arms. If you would like to learn more about this squabbling pair of galactic neighbours, you can explore earlier observations of M51 by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope here.
This Webb observation of M51 is one of a series of observations collectively titled Feedback in Emerging extrAgalactic Star clusTers, or FEAST. The FEAST observations were designed to shed light on the interplay between stellar feedback and star formation in environments outside of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Stellar feedback is the term used to describe the outpouring of energy from stars into the environments which form them, and is a crucial process in determining the rates at which stars form. Understanding stellar feedback is vital to building accurate universal models of star formation.
The aim of the FEAST observations is to discover and study stellar nurseries in galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. Before Webb became operative, other observatories such as the Atacama Large Millimetre Array in the Chilean desert and Hubble have given us a glimpse of star formation either at the onset (tracing the dense gas and dust clouds where stars will form) or after the stars have destroyed with their energy their natal gas and dust clouds. Webb is opening a new window into the early stages of star formation and stellar light, as well as the energy reprocessing of gas and dust. Scientists are seeing star clusters emerging from their natal cloud in galaxies beyond our local group for the first time. They will also be able to measure how long it takes for these stars to pollute with newly formed metals and to clean out the gas (these time scales are different from galaxy to galaxy). By studying these processes, we will better understand how the star formation cycle and metal enrichment are regulated within galaxies as well as what are the time scales for planets and brown dwarfs to form. Once dust and gas is removed from the newly formed stars, there is no material left to form planets.
[Image Description: A large spiral galaxy takes up the entirety of the image. The core is mostly bright white, but there are also swirling, detailed structures that resemble water circling a drain. There is white and pale blue light that emanates from stars and dust at the core’s centre, but it is tightly limited to the core. The rings feature colours of deep red and orange and highlight filaments of dust around cavernous black bubbles.]
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team