The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shared spectacular pictures of the Phantom Galaxy captured by the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy, also known as Messier 74 or M74, is a particular class of spiral galaxy known as ‘grand design spiral’. This means that it has prominent and well-defined spiral arms. It is located nearly 32 million light-years away from the Earth in the Pisces constellation.
Data compiled from NASA’s two telescopes produced three different and absolutely mesmerising images of the M74.
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The first image combined the Webb’s mid-infrared and Hubble’s optical data to produce an image with ‘lacy red filaments’ that spiralled out of the galaxy’s centre. These also contained patches of bright pink colour which according to NASA are ‘star-forming regions’. All this is spread across a black field that is sprinkled all over with tiny blue stars. NASA explained that the red colour depicts dust and a light orange shade means that the dust is hotter. The cyan and green stars closer to the centre are heavier and older and produce a greenish glow at the core.
In the second image, the core of the galaxy appears to emit a bright light out of which, brown filament arms spiral out. There are bright pops of pink on the arms which are star-forming regions, as NASA explains. The dark background has blue stars speckled all throughout.
The third and the final image shows webby filaments twirling out of the bright blue galactic core, forming a spiral. This bluish glow at the heart of the galaxy represents a cluster of young stars. The star-forming regions here, as per NASA, are the blue demarcations and blotches of pink on the delicate spiral arms.
NASA’s post on Instagram has amassed over 14 lakh likes so far leaving the netizens spellbound.
“Most amazing beauty of the sky”, “galaxies are beautiful”, “absolutely stunning”, “beautiful”, were some of the comments.
The filaments in all of these images which make up the spiral arms are made up of gas and dust. The cluster of stars at the centre of the galaxy is visible due to the lack of gas in the nuclear region.
According to the European Space Agency, these observations are part of a larger effort to chart 19 nearby star-forming galaxies in the infrared by the international PHANGS (Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS) collaboration.
The Phantom Galaxy is spread across 1,00,000 light-years. It is presumed to have a black hole at its centre which probably has a mass of 10,000 suns. It is expected to contain about 100 billion stars which makes it a little smaller than our Milky Way.
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