The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the spiral galaxy NGC 3631.
This Hubble image shows NGC 3631, a grand design spiral galaxy some 53 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Filippenko, University of California, Berkeley / D. Sand, University of Arizona / G. Kober, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Catholic University of America.
NGC 3631 resides around 53 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major.
The galaxy was discovered on April 14, 1789 by the German-born British astronomer William Herschel.
Also referred to as Arp 27, LEDA 34767 and UGC 6360 in various astronomical catalogues, it has a diameter of about 60,000 light-years and is classified as a grand design spiral galaxy.
“The arms of grand design spirals appear to wind around and into the galaxy’s nucleus,” Hubble astronomers explained.
“Close inspection of NGC 3631’s spiral arms reveals dark dust lanes and bright star-forming regions along the inner part of the spiral arms.”
“Star formation in spirals is similar to a traffic jam on the interstate,” they added.
“Like cars on the highway, slower moving matter in the spiral’s disk creates a bottleneck, concentrating star-forming gas and dust along the inner part of their spiral arms.”
“This traffic jam of matter can get so dense that it gravitationally collapses, creating new stars (here seen in bright blue-white).”
The color image of NGC 3631 is made up of observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in the infrared and optical parts of the spectrum.
Several filters were used to sample various wavelengths.
The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
“The color blue represents visible wavelengths of blue light, and the color orange represents infrared light,” the researchers said.
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