The Hubble telescope captured a galaxy approaching Earth
Over time, Messier 90 evolves into a lenticular galaxy
Photo: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team
The Hubble Space Telescope captured a galaxy approaching Earth. It is located in the constellation Virgo 55 million light years from our planet.
As informs The European Space Agency, the first image of the galaxy called NGC 4569 (or Messier 90) appeared in 2019 – then it was taken with an older camera.
However, the Hubble image allowed us to create a much more complete picture of this spiral galaxy, its dust disk, gas halo and bright core.
The inner regions of the disk of NGC 4569 are the sites of star formation – they are highlighted in red in the image. A part of the disk shows patches of blue color – they show bright and hot stars.
“Messier 90 is located among galaxies in the relatively nearby Virgo cluster. The density of gas in the constellation’s inner galaxy cluster pushed against the galaxy like a strong headwind, stripping it of a large amount of gas and creating the diffuse halo seen around it.” – they say in ESA.
They also note that this gas is no longer available to Messier 90, so it will not be able to form new stars and will eventually fade as a spiral galaxy, astronomers say.
Messier 90 is approaching the Milky Way, so over the next billion years, scientists will be able to look at it in even more detail. And over time, Messier 90 will evolve into a lenticular galaxy, scientists predict.
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