Pinwheeling
48. arms of Messier 77
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured this vivid image of spiral galaxy Messier 77 — a galaxy
in the constellation of Cetus, some 45 million light-years away from us. The streaks of red and blue
in the image highlight pockets of star formation along the pinwheeling arms, with dark dust lanes
stretching across the galaxy’s starry centre. The galaxy belongs to a class of galaxies known as
Seyfert galaxies, which have highly ionised gas surrounding an intensely active centre.
Credit: NASA, ESA & A. van der Hoeven
“If you ask a random person to name a telescope, assuredly,
the answer given is the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s no
wonder why. No other telescope has captured the sheer
beauty and scale of the cosmos like the HST. Including the
Hubble Deep Field, or the Pillars of Creation, observers have
used the HST to produce some of the most dramatic and
iconic images of celestial targets ever taken. Those and many
other famous images showcase the HST’s unprecedented
clarity and sensitivity, unmatched even by the best of HST’s
rivals. It is those qualities that make the HST one of the most
important astronomical tools ever developed.”
— Dr. Wesley Fraser
Plaskett Fellow
Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics
Victoria, BC, Canada