1 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:07,000 The galaxy Messier 74 lies at a distance over 30 million light years. 2 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:13,000 In the latest image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope the enormous swirls of this stunning spiral galaxy 3 00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:22,000 arc across space adorned with glowing pink regions of hydrogen gas and lit by the pale blue light of millions of newly formed stars. 4 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:42,000 This is the Hubblecast! 5 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:46,000 News and Images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. 6 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:52,000 Travelling through time and space with our host Doctor J a.k.a. Dr Joe Liske. 7 00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:55,000 Welcome to the Hubblecast! 8 00:00:55,000 --> 00:01:02,000 Over the course of its seventeen years in space the Hubble Space Telescope has imaged literally thousands of galaxies. 9 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:12,000 However this latest image from the orbiting space observatory is clearly a red hot candidate for being one of the finest images of a galaxy ever seen. 10 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:22,000 This striking image from Hubble shows Messier 74 a spiral galaxy located about 32 million light years away from Earth. 11 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:29,000 In the new image, Hubble reveals the light from billions of stars in the spiral arms of this stunning galaxy, 12 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:34,000 laced with delicate tendrils of dust silhouetted against the swirling arms. 13 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:43,000 This galaxy (also known as NGC 628) was first observed in 1780 by a French astronomer called Pierre Méchain 14 00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:47,000 who was searching the sky for objects that might be comets. 15 00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:57,000 Soon after he discovered the galaxy, Méchain told his good friend Charles Messier, who then listed it as M74 in his now famous catalogue of deep sky objects. 16 00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:02,000 Of all the objects in Messier’s catalogue, number 74 has the lowest surface brightness 17 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:10,000 and is so difficult for amateur astronomers to spot through a telescope that it has been given the nickname “The Phantom Galaxy”. 18 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:12,000 The stunning new image also shows a sprinkling of bright red regions decorating the spiral arms. 19 00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:24,000 These are vast, relatively short-lived, clouds of hydrogen gas which glow due to the strong radiation from hot, young stars. 20 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:28,000 Astronomers call these clouds HII regions. 21 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:40,000 The really bright stars in the image are actually foreground stars located within our own Milky Way galaxy. 22 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:44,000 They are much closer and are not part of M74 behind them. 23 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:55,000 Hubble’s image also shows an intricate network of dust lanes weaving through the galaxy’s spiral arms. 24 00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:03,000 These dusty swirls have partly been created by previous generations of stars 25 00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:08,000 which seeded the galaxy with newly formed chemical elements when they died as supernovae. 26 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:14,000 In fact two such supernovae have been seen to explode in M74 in recent years. 27 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:23,000 In this image of Messier 74 we can see the blue light from millions of young blue stars in the two main spiral arms of the galaxy. 28 00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:27,000 These spiral arms are not actually static ‘arms’ like spokes on a wheel. 29 00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:32,000 They are in fact density waves and move around the galaxy’s disc compressing gas – 30 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:38,000 just as sound waves compress the air on Earth – creating new generations of young blue stars. 31 00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:45,000 Because of the elegant symmetry of its spiral arms astronomers call this a ‘grand design spiral’. 32 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:49,000 Messier 74 bears a strong resemblance to another ‘grand design spiral’, 33 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:56,000 Messier 51, the Whirlpool Galaxy in the constellation of Canes Venatici the Hunting Dogs. 34 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:04,000 Messier 74 is arguably one of the most photogenic galaxies Hubble has ever observed. 35 00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:12,000 With its myriad of stars and delicate dust lanes it is a place of serene beauty and grandeur on a truly galactic scale. 36 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:15,000 This is Dr J signing off for the Hubblecast. 37 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:20,000 Once again nature has surprised us beyond our wildest imagination 38 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:27,000 Hubblecast is produced by ESA/Hubble at the European Southern Observatory in Germany. 39 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:32,000 The Hubble mission is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency.