Hubble Space Telescope | Flyby of the Whirlpool Galaxy @hubblespacetelescope | Uploaded March 2019 | Updated October 2024, 17 hours ago.
The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51, is one of the nearest and best examples of a grand design spiral galaxy. Located about 25 million light-years away, the face-on galaxy exposes the full details of its swirling structures of stars, gas, and dust. The striking symmetry of its spiral pattern may be due to a gravitational interaction with a companion dwarf galaxy, NGC 5195, which is not included in this visualization.
The Hubble Space Telescope's high-resolution view of this magnificent spiral galaxy comes to life in this 3D visualization. The flight across the pancake-shaped disk features the older, yellower stars toward the center and the younger, bluer stars in the outer regions. Dark dust lanes outline the spiral arms, along which are strewn an array of bright pink star-forming regions.
Credit: F. Summers, J. DePasquale, and D. Player (STScI)
The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51, is one of the nearest and best examples of a grand design spiral galaxy. Located about 25 million light-years away, the face-on galaxy exposes the full details of its swirling structures of stars, gas, and dust. The striking symmetry of its spiral pattern may be due to a gravitational interaction with a companion dwarf galaxy, NGC 5195, which is not included in this visualization.
The Hubble Space Telescope's high-resolution view of this magnificent spiral galaxy comes to life in this 3D visualization. The flight across the pancake-shaped disk features the older, yellower stars toward the center and the younger, bluer stars in the outer regions. Dark dust lanes outline the spiral arms, along which are strewn an array of bright pink star-forming regions.
Credit: F. Summers, J. DePasquale, and D. Player (STScI)
![30 Doradus: A Massive Star-Forming Region [Ultra HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ipkFIgXYDZQ/hqdefault.jpg "30 Doradus: A Massive Star-Forming Region [Ultra HD]
30 Doradus (the Tarantula Nebula) is a very bright and active star-forming region outside of the Milky Way galaxy, at 160,000 light-years away. “30 Dor” is home to the central star cluster NGC 2070, including the most active region, R136, which appears in the central-right area of the image. R136 is a few million years old and contains many thousands of young stars, including several of the largest known. The bright blue stars shine out of the cleared cavity that is excavated by stellar winds. The redder stars are still partially embedded in the cloud material, seen in shadow except where illuminated by the cavity stars. In the infrared view the embedded stars shine more clearly through the intervening cloud material.
Video Credit: NASA, ESA, G.Bacon (STScI)
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. OConnell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee")
![M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy [UltraHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/k0m1isyRX-U/hqdefault.jpg "M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy [UltraHD]
This animation shows the Messier 101 (Pinwheel) Galaxy, with simulated rotation, in visible, then infrared, then X-ray, and finally all three combined.
M101 is a comparable in size to the Milky Way. The disk is 100 billion solar masses, and the central bulge of about 3 billion solar masses. M101 is rich is pinkish star forming regions, many of which are very large and bright. Unlike most spiral galaxies, M101spiral shape is notably asymmetrical. This is due to the tidal forces from interactions with its companion galaxies. These gravitational interactions compress interstellar hydrogen gas, which then triggers strong star formation activity in M101s spiral arms.
Video Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, K. Kuntz (JHU), F. Bresolin (University of Hawaii), J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Lab), J. Mould (NOAO), Y.-H. Chu (University of Illinois, Urbana), and STScI")
![Milky Way Center in Multiple Wavelengths [UltraHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mUQ0yl0w0iQ/hqdefault.jpg "Milky Way Center in Multiple Wavelengths [UltraHD]
Our solar system and sun is located inside a pancake shaped galaxy. Imagine a scale model where the plane of the Milky Way is a DVD, and the central bulge is a ping pong ball glued in the center. It is this narrow plane that we see across the sky on a sufficiently dark night from Earth, from our vantage point inside it. Dust blocks much of our view. But at other wavelengths astronomers can probe the heart of our galaxy.
The center of our Milky Way Galaxy, located 26,000 light-years away, houses a black hole as massive as a million suns, surrounded by very dense nest of stars and bright clouds. The density of stars in the innermost regions of the Milky Way is up to one million times greater than in our portion of the galaxy. This region contains extreme and unusual conditions that can influence the types of stars that reside there. The density of stars and clouds creates streaming patterns. There are large massive star clusters that cannot not be found outside that region. The radiation environment is intense in the galactic center.
The near-infrared image (Hubble) shows the knots of cloud edges and emission that mark the plane of our galaxy. The mid-infrared image (Spitzer) highlights the clouds of gas and dust and star forming regions. The X-ray image (Chandra) tracks the most luminous and powerful stars in the area conspicuously revealing the galactic center region itself - including the million-solar mass black hole at the very hub of our galaxy. In addition, several other X-ray emitting locations can be seen, linked to massive star clusters.
Video: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Image Credits: NASA, ESA, CXC, SSC and STScI")
![HH 901: Pillars in the Carina Nebula [Ultra HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/m_EcoSaqp1U/hqdefault.jpg "HH 901: Pillars in the Carina Nebula [Ultra HD]
Herbig Haro 901 is an immense pillar of gas and dust inside the Carina Nebula, a huge star-forming region in our galaxy. The pillar is several light-years tall and contains a few massive young stars. They shoot out powerful jets that emerge from the cloud. In some cases, the jets create bow-shock patterns similar to the effects of a ship plowing through the ocean. In the visible-light view, very few stars can be seen because the gas and dust block starlight. But in the infrared view, stars become visible and numerous. The visible-light colors emerge from the glow of different gases: oxygen (blue), hydrogen/nitrogen (green), and sulfur (red). The Carina Nebula is approximately 7,500 light years from Earth.
Video: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)")
