Hubble Space Telescope Captures Awesome View of Neighboring Galaxy - Geek

The Hubble Space Telescope has done it again.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) on Monday released the most detailed image of our close neighbor, the Triangulum Galaxy—located a mere 3 million light years from Earth.

This panoramic survey takes viewers on a cosmic journey to the third-largest star system in our Local Group of galaxies, where 40 billion stars make up one of the most distant objects visible to the naked eye.

You may have spotted the Triangulum Galaxy—also known as Messier 33 or NGC 598—on a particularly clear night: it’s that faint, blurry object in the constellation of Triangulum (the Triangle).

Now, it’s easy to get lost in the glittering digital mosaic, comprised of 54 separate photos stitched together to showcase the galaxy’s central region and inner spiral arms.

Measuring only 60,000 light years across, Triangulum is the smallest spiral galaxy in the group, compared to the 200,000 light years of the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Milky Way’s 100,000 light-year diameter.

The runt of the litter also lacks the conventional bright bulge at its heart and does not have a bar connecting its spiral arms to the center.

Still, Messier 33 remains an important find, its abundance of gas clouds drawing astronomers to conduct this detailed analysis. That huge amount of gas and dust allows for rapid star formation, at a rate of approximately one solar mass every two years.

Which is bizarre, because newborn stars devour dust and gas, leaving less fuel for new celestial bodies to emerge.

“These detailed observations of the Triangulum Galaxy have tremendous legacy value,” according to the ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope website. “Combined with those of the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the irregular Magellanic Cloud galaxies, they will help astronomers to better understand star formation and stellar evolution.”

It’s been a whirlwind few months for the Hubble Space Telescope.

After one of its three active gyroscopes failed in early October, HST entered safe mode, returning to normal operations three weeks later, following the successful recovery of a backup device.

It completed science observations the next day, using the Wide Field Camera 3 instrument to capture infrared wavelengths of a distant, star-forming galaxy.

Then, on Dec. 30, Nancy Grace Roman, known as the “Mother of Hubble,” died at the age of 93.

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