Spiral Galaxies

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A spiral galaxy filling the view. Its disk holds many bright red spots where stars are forming, dark reddish threads of dust that obscure light, and bluish glowing areas that hold concentrations of older stars. It has a large, glowing yellow oval area at the center, from which two spiral arms wind through the galaxy’s disk. One side of the disk appears rounded (bottom of the image) while the opposite side appears somewhat squared-off (top of the image).

Hubble Spots a Spiral in the Celestial River

2 min read

The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is NGC 1637, a spiral galaxy located 38 million light-years from…

Article6 days ago
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 center. 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 colored dots, distant galaxies, speckled among the black background of space surrounding the galaxy.

Hats Off to NASA’s Webb: Sombrero Galaxy Dazzles in New Image

5 min read

In a new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a galaxy named for its resemblance to a broad-brimmed Mexican…

Article2 weeks ago
A spiral galaxy seen directly from the side, such that its disk looks like a narrow diagonal band across the image. A band of dark dust covers the disk in the center most of the way out to the ends, and the disk glows around that. In the center of the galaxy, a whitish circle of light bulges out above and below the disk. Each end of the disk curves slightly. The background is black and mostly empty.

Hubble Captures an Edge-On Spiral with Curve Appeal

2 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a spiral galaxy, named UGC 10043. We don’t see the galaxy’s spiral arms…

Article3 weeks ago
In the center is a large, oval-shaped galaxy, with a shining, ringed core. Left of its center is a second, smaller galaxy with two spiral arms. The galaxy pair is so close that they appear to be merging: a tail of material with a few glowing spots connects from one of the smaller galaxy’s spiral arms to the larger galaxy. A faint halo surrounds both galaxies. Several stars are visible around the pair.

Hubble Takes a Look at Tangled Galaxies

2 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image depicts the cosmic tangle that is MCG+05-31-045, a pair of interacting galaxies located 390…

Article4 weeks ago
A whitish, whirlpool-like galaxy at middle of top edge, and a tadpole-shaped structure sweeps from left to right across lower half. A label pointing to outer, left of galaxy reads “Earth.” Faint, purple haze labeled “Milky Way Halo” surrounds galaxy and stretches to graphic’s edges. The tadpole-shaped object is the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, with its own halo and streaming tail. Semi-circular, progressively darker layers of purple labeled “LMC Halo” surround the LMC, which appears roughly circular, with a central, light-yellow bar. Cloud-like features sprinkled with white specks surround this bar. Trailing the LMC is a large, tail-like feature labeled “Stream.” At the bottom left corner of graphic are several small, bright points of light labeled “Quasars.” Three light blue lines point from the label “Earth” through the LMC’s halo, and to three corresponding quasars. At the bottom, right corner is the label “Artist’s Concept.”

NASA’s Hubble Sees Aftermath of Galaxy’s Scrape with Milky Way

5 min read

A story of survival is unfolding at the outer reaches of our galaxy, and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is witnessing…

Article4 weeks ago
A spiral galaxy with an oval-shaped disk. Two large arms curve out away from the ends of the disk. Bright pink patches and dark reddish threads of dust fill the arms. The bright pink patches indicate where stars are forming. The core is very bright and filled with stars. Some large stars appear in front of the galaxy. Directly under the point where the right arm joins the disk, a fading supernova is visible as a green dot.

Hubble Captures a Galaxy with Many Lights

2 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features NGC 1672, a barred spiral galaxy located 49 million light-years from Earth in…

Article1 month ago

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