Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

See our galactic neighbor, the orderly Triangulum galaxy, in high definition

Georgina Torbet
By

Take some time out of your day to ooh and ahh at the beauty of the universe — Hubble has shared another stunning image of a nearby galaxy.

The Hubble Space Telescope has produced this gorgeous high resolution image of the Triangulum galaxy (M33), made up of 25 million viewable stars. Triangulum is one of the closer galaxies to Earth at approximately 3 million light-years distance, and is located in a region called the Local Group. Triangulum is one of the three biggest galaxies in the group, along with Andromeda and our Milky Way. It is thought that Triangulum might be a satellite of Andromeda because of the way that the two galaxies move around each other and because they are so close together.

A view of the Triangulum galaxy (M33) captured by Hubble NASA, ESA, and M. Durbin, J. Dalcanton, and B.F. Williams (University of Washington)

In the Hubble’s image of Triangulum you can see the full spiral face of the galaxy, composed of a stitching together of 54 images captured by the telescope’s full field of view and totaling an area of more than 19,000 light-years across. Part of the reason that the image is so striking is that Triangulum forms stars at a very fast rate, with star formation occurring ten times faster than in the nearby Andromeda galaxy. This vigorous star formation creates lots of light and clouds of gases which are illuminated in the image.

Recommended Videos

Another unusual feature of Triangulum is that it has an unusually orderly spiral, with dust distributed evenly throughout the spiral arms which makes it easy to see the galaxy’s shape. Astronomers believe that the galaxy has evolved this way because it has had minimal interactions with other galaxies, meaning that it could continue producing stars without interference and could retain an organized spiral pattern. Researchers hope that this image can help us learn more about how galaxies develop over time.

Related

You can find high resolution versions of the Triangulum image to pore over in detail on the Hubble website. And the video below shows a zoom in on the Triangulum galaxy, in a three million light-year trip that hones in on the most detailed image of the galaxy ever captured, showing the glowing gas clouds and the spiral arms of the galaxy in stunning detail:

Zooming in on the Triangulum Galaxy

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Hubble image of the week shows an unusual jellyfish galaxy
The jellyfish galaxy JO206 trails across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, showcasing a colorful star-forming disk surrounded by a pale, luminous cloud of dust. A handful of foreground bright stars with crisscross diffraction spikes stands out against an inky black backdrop at the bottom of the image. JO206 lies over 700 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius.

This week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows an unusual type of galaxy named for its aquatic look-alike: a jellyfish.

The jellyfish galaxy JO206 is shown below in an image taken using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. Located 700 million light-years away, in the constellation of Aquarius, this image of the galaxy shows both the bright center of the galaxy and its long tendrils reaching out toward the bottom right. It is these tendrils that give jellyfish galaxies their names, and they are formed through a process called ram pressure stripping.

Read more
A small, fuzzy dwarf galaxy in our neighborhood captured by Hubble
UGCA 307 hangs against an irregular backdrop of distant galaxies in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The small galaxy consists of a diffuse band of stars containing red bubbles of gas that mark regions of recent star formation, and lies roughly 26 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Corvus. Appearing as just a small patch of stars, UGCA 307 is a diminutive dwarf galaxy without a defined structure — resembling nothing more than a hazy patch of passing cloud.

This week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a galaxy in our backyard, cosmically speaking, taken as part of a project to image nearby galaxies. Galaxy UGCA 307 is located 26 million light-years away in the constellation of Corvus, or The Crow, a small constellation visible from the southern hemisphere which was documented as far back as 1,000 years BCE.

There is just a small cluster of stars within this galaxy, as it is a type called a dwarf galaxy. These are defined as galaxies with just a few billion stars, which sounds like a lot until you compare it to the hundreds of billions of stars that are found in our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Read more
Hubble captures a messy irregular galaxy which hosted a supernova
The irregular spiral galaxy NGC 5486 hangs against a background of dim, distant galaxies in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The tenuous disk of the galaxy is threaded through with pink wisps of star formation, which stand out from the diffuse glow of the galaxy’s bright core.

This week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a dramatic spiral galaxy called NGC 5486, which is shot through with wisps of pink showing regions where new stars are being born.

Located 110 million light-years away in the famous constellation of Ursa Major, this galaxy is a type called an irregular spiral galaxy because its arms are wandering and indistinct. If you compare the image of this galaxy to one of a quintessential spiral galaxy like NGC 2336, you'll see that a non-irregular spiral galaxy has clearly defined arms that reach out from its center and are symmetrical.

Read more