NASA's Hubble space telescope captured the magnificent galaxy "Grand Design Spiral," as the heavenly body is nicknamed.
The telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Survey focused on NGC 3631 and captured the galactic image of the galaxy with its spiral arms brimming with star birth.
The blue color represents the visible wavelengths of blue, while the orange color showcases the infrared or heat-rich areas that are otherwise difficult to see due to dust in the way, according to Space.com.
Bright Blue Matters Represents New Starts Created
In a statement about the new image on May 26, NASA said, "Star formation in spiral [galaxies] is similar to a traffic jam on the interstate."
NASA further explained that, 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.
The traffic jam of matter can get so dense that it gravitationally collapses, creating new stars, seen in the image as bright blue-white, according to NASA.
NGC 3631 is found in the constellation Ursa Major, which is situated 53 million light-years from Earth. It represents one of the many galaxies that Hubble officials have been showcasing in recent weeks.
According to NASA, Hubble's galactic research includes fields such as learning about dark matter concentrations, which help to give hints of the universe's structure overall, along with galaxy collisions, formation scenarios, and types.
In a science explainer, NASA stated, "From supermassive black holes at galactic centers to giant bursts of star formation to titanic collisions between galaxies, these discoveries allow astronomers to probe the current properties of galaxies as well as examine how they formed and developed over time."
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Hubble Space Telescope Will Soon Get a Deep-space Companion
Hubble's 32 years of research in orbit will soon get a deep-space companion, according to Space.com.
The James Webb Space Telescope is completing its commissioning at Lagrange 2, which will extend Hubble's work even deeper into the universe.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is the agency's successor to the famous Hubble telescope. It was launched on Dec. 25, 2021, on a mission to study the earliest stars and peer back farther into the universe's past than ever before.
Webb Space Telescope is currently at its observing spot, Lagrange point 2. Presently, it is the largest and most powerful space telescope ever launched.
"Galaxies show us how the matter in the universe is organized on large scales. In order to understand the nature and history of the universe, scientists study how the matter is currently organized and how that organization has changed throughout cosmic time," NASA officials wrote of Webb's expected work.
Webb will focus on the earliest galaxies of our universe. According to Space.com, some of the Webb Cycle 1 studies for galaxies will focus on matters such as star formation, early galaxies with "low metallicity" (rich in hydrogen and helium), dwarf spheroidal galaxies, and the famous nearby Andromeda Galaxy (M31) system of satellite galaxies.
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