Hubble captures a perfectly formed Grand Design Spiral

By Georgina Torbet May 29, 2022

An image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and shared by NASA this week shows the most stunning of spiral galaxies: A Grand Design Spiral called NGC 3631, given that designation because of its clear, prominent arms and highly organized spiral structure. This ideal spiral galaxy is located 53 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Ursa Major and is seen face-on from Earth to give a perfect view of its pleasing structure.

The image was created using data from two of Hubble’s instruments, the Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Advanced Camera for Surveys is a Hubble camera used primarily for capturing data in the visible light range, which is the same range seen by the human eye. It was installed onto Hubble in 2002. The Wide Field Camera 3 is a newer instrument, installed in 2009 as an upgrade to the older Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The Wide Field Camera 3 is used to capture ultraviolet and infrared light as well as to detect visible light.

The Grand Design Spiral, NGC 3631. — This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope features the Grand Design Spiral, NGC 3631, located some 53 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major. The “arms” of grand design spirals appear to wind around and into the galaxy’s nucleus. NASA, ESA, A. Filippenko (University of California - Berkeley), and D. Sand (University of Arizona); Image Processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America)

This image combines both visible light and infrared data. The blue shades represent light which is in the blue visible light wavelength, while the orange represents the infrared data. Looking in the infrared is helpful to look through clouds of dust that are opaque in visible light, and it also maps out the distribution of heat as warm material gives off infrared light.

Recommended Videos

This allows Hubble scientists to look at galaxies like NGC 3631 to see regions of dust and regions where new stars are being born.”Close inspection of NGC 3631’s grand spiral arms reveals dark dust lanes and bright star-forming regions along the inner part of the spiral arms,” the Hubble scientists write.

“Star formation in spirals is similar to a traffic jam on the interstate. Like cars on the highway, slower-moving matter in the spiral’s disk creates a bottleneck, concentrating star-forming gas and dust along the inner part of their spiral arms. This traffic jam of matter can get so dense that it gravitationally collapses, creating new stars (here seen in bright blue-white).”

Topics

Tech News

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…

Space

Hubble observes weird star system with three off-kilter, planet-forming disks

This illustration is based on Hubble Space Telescope images of gas and dust discs encircling the young star TW Hydrae. We have an oblique view of three concentric rings of dust and gas. At the centre is the bright white glow of the central star. The reddish-coloured rings are inclined to each other and are therefore casting dark shadows across the outermost ring.

Planets form from large disks of dust and gas that collect around their host stars. Billions of years ago, our solar system would have looked like a single point of bright light coming from the sun, with a disk of matter swirling around it that eventually clumped into planets. To learn about how our solar system formed, it's helpful to look at other systems that are currently going through this process -- such as TW Hydrae, a system located 200 light-years away and turned face-on toward us, making it the perfect place to observe planetary formation.

But there's something odd about the TW Hydrae system. In 2017, astronomers first noticed a strange shadow that was visible on the disk of dust and gas surrounding the star. While such shadows are typically from a planet formed within the disk, in this case the shadow's shape and movement suggested it was actually from a second disk, located within the first disk and tilted at a different angle. Now, astronomers think they have spotted evidence of a third disk, with all three stacked up and creating a complex pattern of shadows.

Space

Hubble celebrates its 33rd birthday with stunning nebula image

Astronomers are celebrating the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s 33rd launch anniversary with an ethereal photo of a nearby star-forming region, NGC 1333. The nebula is in the Perseus molecular cloud, and is located approximately 960 light-years away.

It will soon be the 33rd anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, and to celebrate this milestone, Hubble scientists have shared a stunning image taken by the telescope of a picturesque nebula. NGC 1333 is a busy stellar nursery, with new stars forming among the cloud of dust and gas located 960 light-years away.

The beautiful image of the nebula shows swirls of dark dust around glowing points of light where new stars are being born. To capture this scene, Hubble used its instruments across their full wavelengths, from ultraviolet through the optical light range and into the near-infrared. Hubble took the image using its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, which used several filter across different wavelengths that were then assigned to colors (Blue: F475W, Green: F606W, Red: F657N and F814W) to create the colorful final result.

Space

James Webb captures a stunning image of two galaxies merging

Shining like a brilliant beacon amidst a sea of galaxies, Arp 220 lights up the night sky in this view from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Actually two spiral galaxies in the process of merging, Arp 220 glows brightest in infrared light, making it an ideal target for Webb. It is an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) with a luminosity of more than a trillion suns. In comparison, our Milky Way galaxy has a much more modest luminosity of about ten billion suns.

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a gorgeous image of a dramatic cosmic event: two galaxies colliding. The two spiral galaxies are in the process of merging, and are glowing brightly in the infrared wavelength in which James Webb operates, shining with the light of more than a trillion suns.

It is not uncommon for two (or more) galaxies to collide and merge, but the two pictured in this image are giving off particularly bright infrared light. The pair has a combined name, Arp 220, as they appear as a single object when viewed from Earth. Known as an ultraluminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG), Arp 220 glows far more brightly than a typical spiral galaxy like our Milky Way.