NASA news: Hubble Telescope pictures reveal beautiful Pinwheel Galaxy with trillion stars
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope snapped this mesmerising view of the Pinwheel Galaxy M101 and the one trillion stars that light it up in our night skies.
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NASA’s incredible picture of M101 is one of the largest photos of a spiral galaxy the Hubble telescope has ever taken. The Pinwheel Galaxy or Messier 101 (M101) dwarfs over our Milky Way and features brightly in the constellation Ursa Major or the Great Bear. When viewed from Earth, M101 appears to be approximately 25 million light-years away. Compared to the Milky Way’s diameter of about 105,700 light-years, M101 measures approximately 170,000 light-years across
The galaxy is also much more populated with nearly one trillion stars – twice as many in our home galaxy.
Dubbed the Pinwheel Galaxy after its unmistakable spiral shape, M101’s spinning arms act as a breeding ground for new stars to form.
NASA said: “The giant spiral disk of stars, dust and gas is 170,000 light-years across – nearly twice the diameter of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
“M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars.
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“The galaxy’s spiral arms are sprinkled with large regions of star-forming nebulas.”
Within these nebulas, giant clouds of molecular hydrogen are the perfect nests for new stars to form.
The newly born stars shine in bright clusters of hot and blue light in the spindly arms.
Spiral galaxies like M101 are among the most popular type of galaxies lighting up the night skies.
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More than 70 percent of the galaxies astronomers have so far observed are spiral.
In the Hubble photo, NASA’s astronomers combined more than 50 snapshots taken over a decade to produced the final images.
Because of this, the produced image was one of the space telescope’s biggest.
NASA said: “Assembled from 51 exposures taken during various studies over nearly 10 years, this infrared and visible light image measures 16,000 by 12,000 pixels.
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“Ground-based images were used to fill in the portions o the galaxy that Hubble did not observe.”
The Pinwheel Galaxy was first observed in 1781 by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain.
The famous astronomer was a colleague of Charles Messier, who is the namesake of M101.
According to NASA, the galaxy shines with a magnitude of 7.9, making it an easy target to spot with a small telescope in April.