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Seen one galaxy, seen 'em all? Not on your life: The Hubble Space Telescope has captured lots of fantastic pictures of spiral galaxies during its 20-plus years of operation, as you can see in our lineup of "Hubble's Greatest Hits." But I have a feeling that today's image of the galaxy NGC 4911 will be joining the hit parade.
This jewel and the other gems in the setting are part of the Coma Cluster, a gathering of galaxies 320 million light-years away from Earth in the northern constellation Coma Berenices. You can make out the wispy tracks of NGC 4911's outer spiral arms, which are being pulled out by the gravitational tug of the neighboring galaxy just to the right (known as NGC 4911A). In today's image release, the Hubble Heritage team says that the material stripped away from the central spiral will be dispersed throughout the galaxy, fueling the creation of new stars.
The cluster is home to nearly 1,000 galaxies in all - and the gravitational interactions involving all those galaxies spark starbirth galore. In NGC 4911, you can see the sparkles of newborn star clusters sprinkled amid iridescent pink clouds of hydrogen. And if you look closely at a higher-resolution view of the scene, you'll spot dozens of galaxies in the background where that story of creation is being repeated countless times.
This picture is the result of 28 hours' worth of exposures made over the course of three years, using Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Some of those exposures were made in 2006 and 2007, before the ACS broke down and the WFPC2 was replaced. Others were made in 2009, after the ACS was fixed and WFPC2 was replaced by Wide Field Camera 3. All those exposures were put together for the Hubble Heritage project.
For more pictures from the new, improved Hubble, check out our slideshow of latest, greatest Hubble hits.
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Holy crap, that is beyond Beautiful!! I cant believe those colors and how sharp that is, I am speechless...
Unbelievable majesty. Like the seen in that movie "contact" when she see the splendor out there and says "they should have sent a poet".
I loved that movie Mob-Barley, it stirred my emotions when that happened because I could imagine what if felt like if that could happen to me. I wish I could go out and explore space like I jump in my car to go out for a night on the town.
My favorite part about the Hubble pics like this are all of the other smaller galaxies floating around in the 'background'. To imagine that if Hubble could get the angle necessary, this same pic could be taken of each of those and this galaxy would be one of those floating around in the 'background'. Then to just try and wrap your head around the distances between two objects in this one pic is mind-numbing. They should include one of those legends like they have on maps that show...one inch = x distance. : ) That would be funny.
Thanks for sharing Alan.
Even though its amazing to see something so far away....the fact that there isn't any push to create a propulsion system capable of taking us there ( as in a few hours/weeks/months) makes it less important.
We need to leave this planet, regardless what people think, humans are explorers and need to have more new homes in order to survive...or one big rock could smash into earth and its GAME OVER
isn't any push!?? There are thousands of teams of genius college students attempting to do that very thing. look into it. there are all sorts of drives, engines, propulsion systems etc.
The fastest man made object in space travels at 18 km/sec (Voyager). At this rate, we can't send humans beyond the solar system. Other planets in our solar system can be an experimental bed, but can't be called home.
Let's say, if we develop an engine in the next couple of million of years, that travels at 1% the speed of light. Then it'll take the engine 100 years to reach the distance of 1 light-year. If we're lucky to find any planets within a distance of 5 light years (say) having a rocky core, oxygen and water, then 5-6 generations of humans may travel, having to live in the space ship for about 500-600 years. Its very questionable whether a space ship can survive that long without complete repairs (the ISS can live for 20), not to mention human beings.
I understand the "we've made a lot of progress in 100 years" theme, but I wonder if mankind will find a solution to the speed/distance conundrum. It will need a lot of ingenuity and luck to escape from Earth. Ingenuity because it becomes harder to manipulate matter and energies on a large scale. It's one thing to accelerate an electron to 99% the speed of light, yet another to do that to 1000kg of mass. Luck because, the closer the planet is to us, obviously our chances are better.
But we do need find another place before time runs out. We don't have a choice. It'll be an epic story, if we're successful.
Initially we will get our best "push" the same we way we always did...SURFING!!...little hotrodders in their modified solar sails will hang around the sun hoping to "ride the big one, bro"........after that the naysayers will make nanny laws about getting to close to the sun and tell stories of icarus...till then the loudest din in the house is going to be "why bother, it is sooo impossible" ...wonder what kind of wax one uses on a proverbial solar board...hydrogenated coconut oil perhaps??? (proton field induced collapsed magnetic induction thermal shields might be a second suggestion, any other ideas out there?)
It will happen, the real question should be when, orwill we still be around for it to happen. Baring our destroying ourselves or some comic disaster that wipes out our species we will eventually get there.
We just need to learn to crawl before we can learn to walk, and walk before we can learn to run, right now our species is still in the crib.
But just look at how fast technology is advancing, what will it be like in 50 years? who knows.
is that a quasar below the galaxy or a really bright star within the galaxy?
I would lay even money that it's not a star in the galaxy. but I can't be sure.
there is a zoom-able image on the link provided in the article. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/24/image/a/ this link will take you to a downloadable image, (the 1mb image looks pretty good on the desktop background).
Thank you Alan for bringing us this wonderful information. I especially enjoyed the Hubble Heritage site.
http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/team_hubble/servicing_missions.php#sm4 - There is a portion that speaks about a "soft capture mechanism". it's sad to think that the hubble doesn't get any more astronaut visit to repair or upgrade it. I know Chandra and other telescopes are bringing us beautiful images but Hubble is just magnificent. the day the use the soft capture mechanism to bring Hubble down to earth will be a bittersweet day for me.
I hope that when hubbles day comes we decide its worth oit to go get it and put it in a museum. We need to its such an important part of our history.
awesome picture, I wonder exactly where that galaxy is right now, knowing it took 320 million light years to get those photons into the big light bucket in the sky (hubble). It would matter where it is now if one wanted to set a course for the heart of that sun..more so, it matters now, if one was looking for gravity waves emananting form THAT black hole AND one assumed (like I do) that gravity waves travels much faster than c. Some food for thought all.
Thank you Hubble team for bringing us this magnificent picture!
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Psalms 19:1