The NASA Hubble Area Telescope has captured a picture of the grand design spiral, NGC 3631.
The spiral galaxy is situated some 53 million light-years away, within the course of the constellation Ursa Main.
Within the photograph, the “arms” of the grand design spiral seem to wind across the galaxy’s nucleus.
“Shut inspection of NGC 3631’s grand spiral arms reveals darkish mud lanes and vibrant star-forming areas alongside the interior a part of the spiral arms. Star formation in spirals is much like a visitors jam on the interstate,” the company mentioned in an announcement.
“Like automobiles on the freeway, slower transferring matter within the spiral’s disk creates a bottleneck, concentrating star-forming fuel and mud alongside the interior a part of their spiral arms. This visitors jam of matter can get so dense that it gravitationally collapses, creating new stars (right here seen in vibrant blue-white),” it mentioned.
NASA famous that the colour blue represents seen wavelengths of blue gentle and the colour orange represents infrared gentle.
The company mentioned that the picture used knowledge from Hubble’s Huge Subject Digital camera 3 and Superior Digital camera for Surveys.
Earlier within the month, the Hubble Area Telescope crew shared a set of supernova host galaxies and has been sharing photos of many extra galaxies in current weeks.
The telescope has been operational since its launch and deployment in 1990.
Hubble has made greater than 1.5 million observations over the course of its lifetime.
It is going to quickly be joined by the $10 billion-dollar James Webb Area Telescope that launched into orbit in December.
