A Hubble Space Telescope image of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 2841
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
 
 

NASA recently published an exquisite image of a beautiful nearby galaxy, known technically as NGC 2841. The image was obtained from Earth orbit, by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). It is a close-up of the central region of the spiral galaxy, located 46 million light years away.

(The light year is a unit of distance measurement in astronomy, and is equal to approximately 10,000 billion km.)

NGC 2841’s core glows in the center of image, as a bright oval, from which spiral arms of stars and clouds of cosmic dust emanate. The central portion of the galaxy is populated by old red stars, while young blue stars blaze along the graceful spiral arms. Remarkably, NGC 2841 lacks the vast star-forming gaseous clouds, which glow pink, characterizing typical spiral galaxies, as NGC 2841 has currently a relatively low rate of star birth, compared to other spiral galaxies. It is possible that powerful radiation and intense winds, from energetic hot stars, cleared out these beautiful gas clouds, slowing the star formation process.

The image was acquired in 2010, by applying HST’s sophisticated Wide Filed Camera 3. It was produced by combining individual images, taken in visual light, infrared and ultraviolet.

HST explores the universe from a low Earth orbit, at an altitude of about 600 km, and orbits Earth every 96 minutes, approximately. It has been named in honor of American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953), who made enormous contributions to astronomy. HST is one of the greatest and most successful scientific projects in history. It has acquired hundreds of thousands of images of thousands of celestial objects, and made numerous startling discoveries, yielding a new better understanding of the cosmos. The Hubble era represents a renaissance in modern astronomy. 

References

Hubble Shows New Image of Spiral Galaxy NGC 2841
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/06/image/a/
Hubble Site
http://hubblesite.org/


Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Senior Astronomy Specialist