Grand-Design Spiral Galaxy - Holiday Wishes Hubble Image

FOR RELEASE: November 29, 2007

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC07-41

HOLIDAY WISHES FROM THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE

Resembling festive lights on a holiday wreath, this NASA/ESA Hubble
Space Telescope image of the nearby spiral galaxy M74 is an iconic
reminder of the impending season. Bright knots of glowing gas light up
the spiral arms, indicating a rich environment of star formation.

Messier 74, also called NGC 628, is a stunning example of a
"grand-design" spiral galaxy that is viewed by Earth observers nearly
face-on. Its perfectly symmetrical spiral arms emanate from the
central
nucleus and are dotted with clusters of young blue stars and glowing
pink regions of ionized hydrogen (hydrogen atoms that have lost their
electrons). These regions of star formation show an excess of light at
ultraviolet wavelengths. Tracing along the spiral arms are winding
dust
lanes that also begin very near the galaxy's nucleus and follow along
the length of the spiral arms.

M74 is located roughly 32 million light-years away in the direction of
the constellation Pisces, the Fish. It is the dominant member of a
small
group of about half a dozen galaxies, the M74 galaxy group. In its
entirety, it is estimated that M74 is home to about 100 billion stars,
making it slightly smaller than our Milky Way.

The spiral galaxy was first discovered by the French astronomer,
Pierre
Méchain, in 1780. Weeks later it was added to Charles Messier's famous
catalog of deep-sky objects.

This Hubble image of M74 is a composite of Advanced Camera for
Surveys'
data taken in 2003 and 2005. The filters used to create the color
image
isolate light from blue, visible, and infrared portions of the
spectrum,
as well as emission from ionized hydrogen (known as HII regions).

A small segment of this image used data from the Canada-France-Hawaii
Telescope and the Gemini Observatory to fill in a region that Hubble
did
not image.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble
Collaboration

Acknowledgment: R. Chandar (University of Toledo) and J. Miller
(University of Michigan)

For images and more information about M74, visit:

http://hubblesite.org/news/2007/41
http://heritage.stsci.edu/2007/41
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0719.html


For additional information, contact:

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
1-410-338-4514
villard@xxxxxxxxx

Keith Noll
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
1-410-338-1828
noll@xxxxxxxxx

Lars Lindberg Christensen
ESA/Hubble, Garching, Germany
+49-89-320-06-306
lars@xxxxxxx

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation
between NASA and the European Space Agency. The Space Telescope
Science
Institute conducts Hubble science operations. The institute is
operated
for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy,
Inc., Washington.
.

Relevant Pages