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

Hubble captures a spectacular ‘face-on’ Starburst galaxy

Georgina Torbet
By
The luminous heart of the galaxy M61 dominates this image, framed by its winding spiral arms threaded with dark tendrils of dust. As well as the usual bright bands of stars, the spiral arms of M61 are studded with ruby-red patches of light. Tell-tale signs of recent star formation, these glowing regions lead to M61’s classification as a starburst galaxy.
The luminous heart of the galaxy M61 dominates this image, framed by its winding spiral arms threaded with dark tendrils of dust. As well as the usual bright bands of stars, the spiral arms of M61 are studded with ruby-red patches of light. Tell-tale signs of recent star formation, these glowing regions lead to M61’s classification as a starburst galaxy. ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESO, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

The scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope have shared another spectacular image of space. This image shows galaxy M61, located in the Virgo Cluster, with its spiral arms and regions of star formation shown in red. The image was created using data from the space-based Hubble, supplemented by data from other instruments like the FOcal Reducer and Spectrograph 2 (FORS 2) camera at the European Southern Observatory’s ground-based Very Large Telescope.

This galaxy is notable in that it appears “face on” to us from Earth — that is, it appears almost completely flat, allowing us an excellent view of the structures of the galaxy. Even though it is located 52 million light-years away, it is still a popular target for astronomical observations because of its face on appearance.

Recommended Videos

In the red regions in the arms of the galaxy, stars have recently been born when patches of dust and gas have clumped together, then eventually collapsed under the weight of their gravity to form the core of a new star. Stars aren’t only being born in the spiral arms of M61 though. Unseen, in the center of the galaxy around the supermassive black hole at its heart, more pockets of star formation lie.

Related

There is so much star formation going on in this galaxy that it is categorized as a starburst galaxy. This is a phase in which a galaxy is very active in terms of star formation, producing stars at a rate up to ten times the rate of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Another unusual feature about this galaxy is its unusually high rate of extragalactic supernovae. There have been eight observed supernovae in this galaxy when massive stars have come to the end of their lives and exploded in a huge outpouring of energy. This makes M61 one of the galaxies to host the most known supernovae.

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…
Swatch lets you put a stunning Webb space image on a watch face
New Swatch designs featuring images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Space fans have been marveling at the stunning images beamed to Earth by the James Webb Space Telescope ever since it went into operation last year.

The most powerful space telescope ever built is using its near-infrared camera (NIRCam) to peer deeper into space than ever before, with scientists hoping that its discoveries could help unlock some of the mysteries of the universe.

Read more
A galaxy with layers like an onion shines in Dark Energy Camera image
The symmetrical, onion-like layers of shell galaxy NGC 3923 are showcased in this galaxy-rich image taken by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Dark Energy Camera mounted on the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. A nearby, massive galaxy cluster is also captured exhibiting the phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.

A new image taken by the Dark Energy Camera shows a "galactic onion," a shell galaxy with multiple layers that are spread out over a distance of 150,000 light-years. At around twice the size of the Milky Way, the galaxy NGC 3923 is large, but even larger is a nearby galaxy cluster that has so much mass that it is bending space-time, making the light from distant galaxies behind it bend like a magnifying glass in a process called gravitational lensing.

The Dark Energy Camera is ground-based instrument located at the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope in Chile and was originally built to observe many galaxies as part of a project called the Dark Energy Survey. Now, it is also used for other observations such as imaging dwarf galaxies, merging galaxies, and more.

Read more
Hubble snaps an autumnal nebula glowing orange from young, hot stars
Tthis image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features a glistening scene in red. It reveals a small regio

A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a nebula in the gorgeous colors of autumn, just in time for leaf-changing season in the northern hemisphere. It shows a part of a nebula called Westerhout 5, located 7,000 light-years away and also known as the Soul Nebula.

It is an emission nebula, meaning that its gorgeous colors and shapes are created by gas which has become ionized by starlight from bright, hot stars. As very massive stars are born and give off large gusts of radiation and streams of particles called stellar winds, these blow away nearby material which prevents more stars from forming too close. This creates cavities within the nebula, and in between these cavities more gas is pushed together. Then more stars can form in these now denser regions.

Read more