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Hubble's spectacular new image of the Umbrella Galaxy will help make your quarantine prettier

Things are pretty stressful on Earth right now -- so look at the sky!

Alexandru Micu
March 31, 2020 @ 4:37 pm

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Although things are getting pretty stressful here on Earth, it’s worth remembering that the universe is still an amazing place. A new image of the galaxy NGC 4651 captured by the Hubble Space Telescope is a great way to remind us of that.

The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and near-infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument.
Image credits NASA / ESA / Hubble / D. Leonard.

NGC 4651 sprawls about 93 million light-years away from our home, in the constellation of Coma Berenices — Latin for “Berenice’s Hair”. This group of stars is visible from both hemispheres and is the only constellation to be named after a historical figure.

The galaxy was first discovered by the German-born British astronomer William Herschel on December 30, 1783. But it hasn’t been seen in such exquisite detail ever before.

Pretty but dangerous

“NGC 4651 may look serene and peaceful as it swirls in the vast, silent emptiness of space, but don’t be fooled — it keeps a violent secret,” the Hubble team said. “It is believed that this galaxy consumed another smaller galaxy to become the large and beautiful spiral that we observe today.”

NGC 4651 is also known as the Umbrella Galaxy for the umbrella-like structure that extends some 100 thousand light-years beyond its disk. This bright structure is composed of tidal star streams — trails of starstuff that the galaxy’s gravitational pull stripped from a smaller satellite galaxy. This smaller galaxy has been completely devoured by NGC 4651 by this point.

I’ve marked the smaller galaxy’s remnant core — identified using data from the large Subaru and Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea — with a red line. It’s that tiny dot.
Image credits R. Jay GaBany via Wikimedia.

The team explains that this galaxy can be seen even with “an amateur telescope,” so if you do happen to have one on hand, that could help make your quarantine just a bit more bearable.

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