Hubble captures a spectacular ‘face-on’ Starburst galaxy

By Georgina Torbet Published April 28, 2022

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.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

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.

Topics

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…

Space

NASA orbiter captures one last image of retired InSight lander on Mars

This illustration shows NASA's InSight spacecraft with its instruments deployed on the Martian surface.

NASA's Insight lander spent four years on the surface of Mars, uncovering secrets of the planet's interior, but it eventually succumbed to the most martian of environmental threats: dust. Mars has periodic dust storms that can whip up into huge global events, lifting dust up into the air and then dumping it on everything in sight -- including solar panels. After years of accumulation, eventually the dust was so thick that Insight's solar panels could no longer generate enough power to keep it operational, and the mission officially came to an end in December 2022.

That wasn't quite the end of the story for InSight, though, as it is still being used for science to this day, albeit indirectly. Recently, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) caught a glimpse of InSight from orbit, capturing the lander's dusty surroundings and showing how even more dust had built up on it.

Space

See the majestic Southern Pinwheel Galaxy in this Dark Energy Camera image

Twelve million light-years away lies the galactic masterpiece Messier 83, also known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy. Its swirling spiral arms display a high rate of star formation and host six detected supernovae. This image was captured with the Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab.

An image from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) shows a striking celestial sight: the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, a gorgeous face-on galaxy that is one of the closest and brightest barred spiral galaxies in the sky. Also known as Messier 83, the galaxy is bright enough that it can even be seen with binoculars, but this image from a 4-meter Víctor M. Blanco Telescope shows the kind of stunning detail that can be picked out using a powerful instrument.

"This image shows Messier 83’s well-defined spiral arms, filled with pink clouds of hydrogen gas where new stars are forming," explains NOIRLab from the National Science Foundation, which released the image. "Interspersed amongst these pink regions are bright blue clusters of hot, young stars whose ultraviolet radiation has blown away the surrounding gas. At the galaxy’s core, a yellow central bulge is composed of older stars, and a weak bar connects the spiral arms through the center, funneling gas from the outer regions toward the core. DECam’s high sensitivity captures Messier 83’s extended halo, and myriad more distant galaxies in the background."

Space

Feast your eyes on 10 years of Hubble images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune

This is a montage of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope views of our solar system's four giant outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, each shown in enhanced color. The images were taken over nearly 10 years, from 2014 to 2024.

While the Hubble Space Telescope might be most famous for its images of beautiful and far-off objects like nebulae or distant galaxies, it also takes images of objects closer to home, including the planets right here in our own solar system. For the past 10 years, Hubble has been studying the outer planets in a project called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy), capturing regular images of each of the four outer planets so scientists can study their changes over time.

The planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are different in many ways from Earth, as they are gas giants and ice giants rather than rocky planets. But they do have some similar phenomena, such as weather that regularly changes, including epic events like storms that are so large they can be seen from space. Jupiter's Great Red Spot, for example, the big orange-red eye shape that is visible on most images of the planet, is an enormous storm larger than the width of the entire Earth and which has been raging for centuries.