Picture of the Week 2024

4 March 2024: Here we see NGC 4423, a galaxy that lies about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. In this image NGC 4423 appears to have quite an irregular, tubular form, so it might be surprising to find out that it is in fact a spiral galaxy. Knowing this, we can make out the denser central bulge of the galaxy, and the less crowded surrounding disc (the part that comprises the spiral arms). If NGC 4423 were viewed face-on it would resemble the shape that we most associate with spiral galaxies: the spectacular curving arms sweeping out from a bright centre, interspersed with dimmer, darker, less populated regions. But when observing the skies we are constrained by the relative alignments between Earth and the objects that we are observing: we cannot simply reposition Earth so that we can get a better face-on view of NGC 4423! Of course, celestial objects …

26 February 2024: This densely populated group of stars is the globular cluster known as NGC 1841, which is found within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way galaxy that lies about 162 000 light-years away. Satellite galaxies are galaxies that are bound by gravity in orbits around a more massive host galaxy. We typically think of our galaxy’s nearest galactic companion as being the Andromeda Galaxy, but it would be more accurate to say that Andromeda is the nearest galaxy that is not in orbit around the Milky Way galaxy. In fact, our galaxy is orbited by tens of known satellite galaxies that are far closer than Andromeda, the largest and brightest of which is the LMC, which is easily visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere (although this is decreasingly the case thanks to light pollution). The LMC is home to many globular clusters. …

19 February 2024: This image features IC 3476, a dwarf galaxy that lies about 54 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. Whilst this image does not look very dramatic — if we were to anthropomorphise the galaxy, we might say it looks almost serene — the actual physical events taking place in IC 3476 are highly energetic. In fact, the little galaxy is undergoing a process known as ram pressure stripping, which is driving unusually high levels of star formation within regions of the galaxy itself. We tend to associate the letters ‘ram’ with the acronym RAM, which refers to Random Access Memory in computing. However, ram pressure has a totally distinct definition in physics: it is the pressure exerted on a body when it moves through some form of fluid, due to the overall resistance of the fluid. In the case of entire galaxies experiencing ram pressure, the galaxies …

12 February 2024: If the Hubble Picture of the Week from two weeks ago was somewhat dim and subtle in appearance, then this week’s image is a veritable riot of colour and activity! It features a relatively close-by star-forming region known as IRAS 16562-3959 that lies within the Milky Way in the constellation Scorpius, about 5900 light-years from Earth. This image was compiled using observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC 3). The detailed nuances of colour are possible because of the four separate filters that were used to collect the data. Filters are thin slivers of highly specialised material that only allow very specific wavelengths of light through. They can be slid in front of the part of the telescope that is sensitive to light, letting astronomers control which wavelengths of light the telescope collects with each observation. This is useful not only for specific scientific research, but also for the …

5 February 2024: This image shows a densely packed field of stars, laid on top of a background of dust, gas, and light from more distant celestial objects. The stars take up so much of the field of view in this image that it is a little tricky to discern that you are in fact looking at most of a galaxy, known as ESO 245-5. This galaxy is a relatively close neighbour of the Milky Way, lying at the fairly modest distance of 15 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Phoenix. Another reason that it is perhaps a little tricky to spot that ESO 245-5 is a galaxy is its apparent lack of structure. We frequently enjoy Hubble’s spectacular images of spiral galaxies, which are so interesting to look at in part because of their seemingly extraordinarily ordered arms of stars, gas and dust. ESO 245-5, in contrast, is classified as an …

29 January 2024: This image of the spiral galaxy UGC 11105 is not as bright and vivid as some other Hubble Pictures of the Week. This softly luminous galaxy — lying in the constellation Hercules, about 110 million light-years from Earth — seems outshone by the sparkling foreground stars that surround it. The type II supernova which took place in this galaxy in 2019, while no longer visible in this image, definitely outshone the galaxy at the time! To be more precise, UGC 11105 has an apparent magnitude of around 13.6 in the optical light regime (this image was created using data that covers the heart of the optical regime, in addition to ultraviolet data). Astronomers have different ways of quantifying how bright celestial objects are, and apparent magnitude is one of them. Firstly, the ‘apparent’ part of this quantity refers to the fact that apparent magnitude only describes how bright objects appear …

22 January 2024: This image shows the spiral galaxy IC 438, which lies about 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Lepus (the Hare). Lepus lies just south of the celestial equator (the ring around the middle of Earth that falls at right angles to its rotation axis). Appropriately, Lepus is flanked by the constellations Canis Major (the Greater Dog) and Orion (the Hunter), whilst Canis Minor (the Lesser Dog) lies very nearby, meaning that in artistic representations of the constellations, Lepus is often shown as being pursued by Orion and his two hunting dogs. Lepus is one of the 88 constellations that are officially recognised by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It is worth clarifying that, whilst the actual constellations themselves only comprise a handful of stars, the area of sky covered by those stars is often referred to using the name of the constellation. For example, when we say that …

15 January 2024: This image features a relatively small galaxy known as UGC 5189A, which is located about 150 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. This galaxy was observed by Hubble to study a supernova explosion in 2010 known as SN 2010jl. This particular supernova was notable for having been an exceptionally luminous supernova event. In fact, over a period of three years, SN 2010jl released at least 2.5 billion times more visible energy alone than our Sun emitted over the same timeframe across all wavelengths. Even after supernovae have faded to non-observable levels, it can still be of interest to study the environments where they occurred. This can provide astronomers with valuable information: supernovae can take place for a variety of reasons, and understanding the environments in which they took place can help improve our understanding of the conditions necessary for them to be triggered. Furthermore, follow-up studies after supernovae can …

8 January 2024: This Hubble Picture of the Week features Arp 122, a peculiar galaxy that in fact comprises two galaxies — NGC 6040, the tilted, warped spiral galaxy and LEDA 59642, the round, face-on spiral — that are in the midst of a collision. This dramatic cosmic encounter is located at the very safe distance of roughly 570 million light-years from Earth. Peeking in at the corner is the elliptical galaxy NGC 6041, a central member of the galaxy cluster that Arp 122 resides in, but otherwise not participating in this monster merger. Galactic collisions and mergers are monumentally energetic and dramatic events, but they take place on a very slow timescale. For example, the Milky Way is on track to collide with its nearest galactic neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), but these two galaxies have a good four billion years to go before they actually meet. The process of colliding and …

1 January 2024: What are we looking at when we study this image? A very distant galaxy that lies 19.5 billion light-years from Earth? Or a much closer luminous red galaxy that is a (relatively) small 2.7 billion light-years away? Or a third galaxy that appears to be fairly close to the second? The answer, perhaps confusingly, is that we are looking at all three. More precisely, we are looking at light emitted from all of those galaxies, even though the most distant galaxy lies directly behind the first as seen from Earth. In fact, it is that very alignment that makes the particular visuals in this image possible. The central bright dot in this image is one of the closer galaxies, known by the lengthy — but informative — name of SDSS J020941.27+001558.4 (galaxy names in this format provide precise information about their location in the sky). The other bright dot above …