Hubble takes a spiral snapshot

The luminous coronary heart of the galaxy M61 dominates this image, framed by its winding spiral hands threaded with murky tendrils of mud. As successfully because the neatly-liked animated bands of stars, the spiral hands of M61 are studded with ruby-purple patches of sunshine. Tell-story signs of most contemporary superstar formation, these heavenly areas result in M61’s classification as a starburst galaxy.

Though the intellectual spiral of this galaxy makes for a spectacular stare, one amongst primarily the most attention-grabbing parts of M61 lurks unseen at the heart of this image. The coronary heart of the galaxy reveals neatly-liked pockets of superstar formation, and hosts a supermassive murky gap extra than 5 million times as huge because the Sun.

M61 looks nearly face-on, making it a favored field for powerful images, even supposing the galaxy lies extra than 52 million gentle-years from Earth. This explicit powerful image comprises files from no longer only Hubble, but additionally the FOcal Reducer and Spectrograph 2 camera at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Abundant Telescope, together revealing M61 in unprecedented facet.

This inserting image is one amongst many examples of telescope teamwork—astronomers regularly combine files from ground-primarily based fully and space-primarily based fully telescopes to be taught extra referring to the universe.