Hubble captures spiral galaxy NGC 4689

Madrid. This picture from the NASA/ESA Hubble House Telescope reveals the brilliant spiral galaxy NGC 4689, which is positioned 54 million mild years from Earth within the Coma Berenices constellation.

This constellation has the excellence of being the one one of many 88 constellations formally acknowledged by the Worldwide Astronomical Union (IAU) to be named after the historic determine, Queen Bernice II of Egypt.

The Latin phrase “coma” refers to her hair, which signifies that NGC 4689 is discovered within the hair of a queen. Some individuals of Berenice’s time would have meant this fairly actually, because the story goes that the astronomer at her court docket thought the gods had catasterized (a phrase which means “positioned among the many stars”) a lacking lock of hair. of Berenice: therefore the identify of the constellation Coma Berenices, explains NASA.

NGC 4689 occupies an attention-grabbing, if much less actual, place in trendy astronomy. The universe is so extremely huge that, at a distance of 54 million mild years, NGC 4689 is comparatively shut for a galaxy. This picture consists of information from two units of observations, one made in 2019 and the opposite in 2024, and each are a part of applications that noticed a number of “close by” galaxies.

For the area company, the 2024 observing program is an attention-grabbing instance of how Hubble (an awfully productive telescope for greater than three a long time) and the James Webb House Telescope complement one another.

The observations collected by Webb can rework our understanding of how galaxies change and evolve over time, offering infrared information with an unprecedented stage of element and readability. Nonetheless, Hubble’s ultraviolet and visual mild observations, like these used to create this picture, complement Webb’s observations.

On this case, Hubble information supply a extra exact evaluation of the stellar populations of close by galaxies, which is essential for understanding their evolution. Observations from Hubble and Webb play an essential position in growing our understanding of how galaxies kind and evolve, and observations of NGC 4689 are a helpful a part of that quest for data. In reality, Hubble offered a picture of the galaxy earlier, in 2020.