By ESA/Hubble December 16, 2024
Collected at: https://scitechdaily.com/galactic-gaze-a-cosmic-eye-watching-from-76-million-light-years-away/
Hubble, Webb, and ALMA telescopes collaboratively explore the spiral galaxy NGC 2566, revealing its structure and star-forming processes, and enhancing knowledge of galactic dynamics and star life cycles.
This new Hubble Space Telescope’s image features the spiral galaxy NGC 2566, located 76 million light-years away in the constellation Puppis. A striking bar of stars stretches across its center, with spiral arms extending from both ends. From our vantage point, the galaxy’s tilted orientation makes its disc appear almond-shaped, resembling a cosmic eye.
While NGC 2566 seems to gaze at us, astronomers look right back, observing it closely using Hubble’s powerful instruments. They focus on the galaxy’s star clusters and star-forming regions, particularly young stars only a few million years old. These stars shine brightly in ultraviolet and visible light, making them ideal targets for Hubble’s sensors. By analyzing this data, researchers can estimate the ages of stars in NGC 2566, reconstructing its star formation history and the dynamic exchange of gas between forming stars and surrounding clouds.
Several other astronomical observatories have examined NGC 2566, including the James Webb Space Telescope. The Webb data complement this Hubble image, adding a view of NGC 2566’s warm, glowing dust to Hubble’s stellar portrait. At the long-wavelength end of the electromagnetic spectrum, NGC 2566 has also been observed by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). ALMA is a network of 66 radio telescopes that work together as one to capture detailed images of the clouds of gas in which stars form. Together, Hubble, Webb, and ALMA provide an overview of the formation, lives, and deaths of stars in galaxies across the Universe.
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