Gaze Into the Heart of a Grand Spiral Galaxy

By Nancy Atkinson May 30, 2022
Gaze Into the Heart of a Grand Spiral Galaxy

Here’s Hubble doing what Hubble does best.

Some of the Hubble Space Telescope’s most famous and stunning images are of distant galaxies, and this one is drop-dead gorgeous too.

This new image features the Grand Design Spiral, NGC 3631, which is located about 53 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major.

The “arms” of grand design spirals appear to wind around and into the galaxy’s nucleus.

A ‘Grand Design’ spiral galaxy is a type of spiral galaxy with prominent and well-defined spiral arms. The arms of this galaxy look as though they are winding around and spiraling out from the galaxy’s center, like a classic spiral galaxy. Other spiral galaxies might have multiple arms or be more “flocculent” or fluffy. But about 10% of spiral galaxies are considered Grand Design Spirals.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Filippenko (University of California - Berkeley), and D. Sand (University of Arizona); Image Processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America)

Take a closer look at NGC 3631 and you can see bright star forming regions along the inner part of the spiral arms, and the new stars show up as a bright blue (remember the old astronomical adage: new and blue, red and dead.)

The image includes data taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Lead image caption: Image Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Filippenko (University of California - Berkeley), and D. Sand (University of Arizona); Image Processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America)

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com