Skip to main content

Hubble captures a spectacular ‘face-on’ Starburst galaxy

The luminous heart of the galaxy M61 dominates this image, framed by its winding spiral arms threaded with dark tendrils of dust. As well as the usual bright bands of stars, the spiral arms of M61 are studded with ruby-red patches of light. Tell-tale signs of recent star formation, these glowing regions lead to M61’s classification as a starburst galaxy.
The luminous heart of the galaxy M61 dominates this image, framed by its winding spiral arms threaded with dark tendrils of dust. As well as the usual bright bands of stars, the spiral arms of M61 are studded with ruby-red patches of light. Tell-tale signs of recent star formation, these glowing regions lead to M61’s classification as a starburst galaxy. ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESO, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

The scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope have shared another spectacular image of space. This image shows galaxy M61, located in the Virgo Cluster, with its spiral arms and regions of star formation shown in red. The image was created using data from the space-based Hubble, supplemented by data from other instruments like the FOcal Reducer and Spectrograph 2 (FORS 2) camera at the European Southern Observatory’s ground-based Very Large Telescope.

This galaxy is notable in that it appears “face on” to us from Earth — that is, it appears almost completely flat, allowing us an excellent view of the structures of the galaxy. Even though it is located 52 million light-years away, it is still a popular target for astronomical observations because of its face on appearance.

Recommended Videos

In the red regions in the arms of the galaxy, stars have recently been born when patches of dust and gas have clumped together, then eventually collapsed under the weight of their gravity to form the core of a new star. Stars aren’t only being born in the spiral arms of M61 though. Unseen, in the center of the galaxy around the supermassive black hole at its heart, more pockets of star formation lie.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

There is so much star formation going on in this galaxy that it is categorized as a starburst galaxy. This is a phase in which a galaxy is very active in terms of star formation, producing stars at a rate up to ten times the rate of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Another unusual feature about this galaxy is its unusually high rate of extragalactic supernovae. There have been eight observed supernovae in this galaxy when massive stars have come to the end of their lives and exploded in a huge outpouring of energy. This makes M61 one of the galaxies to host the most known supernovae.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
See the amazing images of Mercury captured by the BepiColombo mission
This is one of a series of images taken by the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission on 8 January 2025 as the spacecraft sped by for its sixth and final gravity assist manoeuvre at the planet. Flying over Mercury's north pole gave the spacecraft's monitoring camera 1 (M-CAM 1) a unique opportunity to peer down into the shadowy polar craters. M-CAM 1 took this long-exposure photograph of Mercury's north pole at 07:07 CET, when the spacecraft was about 787 km from the planet’s surface. The spacecraft’s closest approach of 295 km took place on the planet's night side at 06:59 CET.

The European Space Agency (ESA)'s BepiColombo mission has made another flyby of Mercury, capturing fascinating images of this lesser-studied inner planet. On January 8, 2025, the spacecraft made its sixth flyby of the small planet located close to the sun, taking advantage of the planet's gravity to adjust its course so it can enter orbit in 2026.

On the flyby, the spacecraft passed within just 180 miles of Mercury's surface, enabling it to capture close-up images of the planet. It passed the planet's night side, which faces out into space and away from the sun, then over its north pole before swinging over to see its north hemisphere in the sunlight. The images were captured with the spacecraft's three monitoring cameras, called M-CAM 1, 2, and 3, which take black-and-white images with a resolution of 1024 x 1024. Despite this relatively low resolution, the images are still scientifically valuable as they show many of the planet's surface features.

Read more
Relive SpaceX’s most spectacular moment of 2024
SpaceX's Super Heavy booster being caught by the launch tower for the first time.

SpaceX has had a busy and memorable year, conducting more Falcon 9 missions than ever and making tangible progress with the development of its next-generation Starship vehicle, the most powerful rocket ever to fly.

The most notable of the Starship test missions came on October 13 when SpaceX’s launch tower “caught” the returning Super Heavy booster on the very first attempt.

Read more
NASA telescopes capture a cosmic wreath for the holidays
This image depicts star cluster NGC 602 in vibrant and festive colors. The cluster includes a giant dust cloud ring, shown in greens, yellows, blues, and oranges. The green hues and feathery edges of the ring cloud create the appearance of a wreath made of evergreen boughs. Hints of red representing X-rays provide shading, highlighting layers within the wreath-like ring cloud.

NASA is ringing in the holiday season with the release of a new image, showing a cosmic wreath. The image, using data taken by several space telescopes, shows a star cluster called NGC 602, located in a nearby satellite galaxy of the Milky Way called the Small Magellanic Cloud.

The image combines data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which looks in the X-ray portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the James Webb Space Telescope, which looks in the infrared. The red points of glowing light are bright, massive, young stars that are giving off large amounts of radiation and were detected by Chandra, while Webb provided the background colors of orange, yellow, green, and blue that indicate the presence of the warm dust that forms the wreath shape.

Read more