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Hubble Shoots ‘Grand’ Spiral Galaxy Head On

Hubble

The Hubble space telescope may be obsolete, with its replacement, James Webb, ready to come fully online any day now, but that doesn’t mean it won’t still be bringing us stunning photos. Images like this one of spiral galaxy NGC 3631, captured absolutely head on, 90 degrees from the plane of it’s arms.

Hubble images heart of grand design

Just to remind everyone that it’s still on the job, the Hubble Space Telescope, CNN reports, “has looked straight into the heart of a stunning galaxy.

What it snapped a shot of is a “head-on view of a grand design spiral galaxy, called NGC 3631, located about 53 million light-years away from Earth.” You can find it in the general direction of Ursa Major.

This particular type of galaxy is special because it’s arms “seem to wrap around the galaxy’s structure, as well as into the heart of the galaxy.

The thing Hubble did best was highlight an “unusual wrinkle” in the “expansion rate of the universe.” In the image, the bright areas are stellar nursery regions where brand new baby stars are being born and the dark dusty areas are dust which hasn’t ignited into fusion yet.

The Hubble photo reveals incredibly detailed structure in the way stars form within the spiral arms. That seems to be due to “logjams” of slower moving matter.

Once gravity packs the dust and gas into a tight enough ball, pressure ignites the fusion reaction and a star is born.

Baby blue-white stars

As this Hubble image reveals, “star formation can be seen in bright blue-white.” Other, cooler shades of blue “represent visible light and the orange showcase infrared light, which is otherwise invisible to the human eye.

That infrared spectrum will be the specialty of the new James Webb Space telescope. It’s already put out a couple of record breaking images and those were only instrument calibration checks. The real deal photos are slated to begin trickling out this month.

This particular Hubble snapshot was “created using data from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys.

While spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way are a dime a dozen, “grand design” spirals are a whole lot harder to come across. Finding one at exactly the right angle to catch this image is priceless enough to end up in a MasterCard commercial.

What do you think?

Written by Mark Megahan

Mark Megahan is a resident of Morristown, Arizona and aficionado of the finer things in life.

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