Hubble greets 2021 with an image of a distant galaxy ... smiling!
“Dedicated amateur astronomers often make intriguing discoveries, particularly of fleeting astronomical phenomena such as supernovae and comets, ”NASA explained on their Hubble feed. At the time of writing, it is the last Hubble photo released for the year.
NASA and ESA have now released a dazzling new photo of the house of this explosion, captured by our ever-faithful telescope Hubble: the galaxy NGC 3568 with its hazy gas and twinkling stars waving in space under the extra bright and much closer stars of our galaxy, strangely reminiscent of a smiley smiley.
Hubble Space Telescope. Credits: NASA "The small elongations in the orbits of stars grow and lock into place, creating a bar," explained IBM astronomer Bruce Elmegreen at the time. “The bar gets even stronger as it locks more and more of these elongated orbits into place. Eventually a high fraction of the stars in the galaxy's inner region join the bar. "
Even older are elliptical galaxies that lack highly active star-forming regions and are filled with old red stars. With the successful launch of the James Webb telescope this week we can hope to see even more incredible details of wonders so distant in the new year. Our most powerful telescope ever, with infrared capabilities capable of penetrating clouds of gas and dust to peer into stellar nurseries, could even help reveal the entire life cycle of a galaxy.
