Amazing image of a galaxy captured by NASA

Hubble space telescope of NASA has captured an amazing image of a galaxy’s spiral pattern. The galaxy named ‘ NGC 3175’ is located around 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Antlia (the Air Pump), said NASA.

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“The galaxy can be seen slicing across the frame in this image from the Nasa/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, with its mix of bright patches of glowing gas, dark lanes of dust, bright core, and whirling, pinwheeling arms coming together to paint a beautiful celestial scene,” said the ESA, in a statement posted on Nasa’s website.

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“Despite being just over 130 million light-years away, the orientation of the galaxy with respect to us makes it easier to spot these new ‘stars’ as they appear; we see NGC 5468 face on, meaning we can see the galaxy’s loose, open spiral pattern in beautiful detail in images such as this one from the Nasa/ESA Hubble Space Telescope,” the statement added.

NGC 3175, seen in this Picture of the Week, is located around 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Antlia (The Air Pump).

Credit: @ESA / @Hubble_Space / @NASA /D. Rosario et al. https://t.co/LmgZ7RRyll pic.twitter.com/NqvUtljJH6

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) December 9, 2019

A study published in the Astrophysical Journal, estimated that the Milky Way weighs in at about 1.5 trillion solar masses (one solar mass is the mass of our Sun). The researchers in this study based Hubble Space Telescope and the ESA’s Gaia satellite to make the measurements.

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Only a few percent of this is contributed by the approximately 200 billion stars in the Milky Way and includes a 4-million-solar-mass supermassive black hole at the centre. Most of the rest of the mass is locked up in dark matter, said the study.

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Earlier research dating back several decades used a variety of observational techniques that provided estimates for our galaxy’s mass ranging between 500 billion to 3 trillion solar masses, according to Nasa.