Where In The Universe #54

By Nancy Atkinson - May 13, 2009 at 6:46 PM UTC | Observing
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It's Wednesday, so that means its time for another "Where In The Universe" challenge to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. See if you can name where in the Universe this image is from, and give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. Make your guess and post a comment, but please no links to the answer. Check back sometime on Thursday to find the answer and see how you did.

UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below.

I chose a Hubble image this week, in honor of the current Hubble Servicing Mission. This is, as many of you said, the Cartwheel Galaxy.

The Cartwheel is a ring galaxy, lying about 500 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. It has been tidally distorted by an encounter with another galaxy into a ring-and-hub structure.

The striking cartwheel appearance is the result of a smaller intruder galaxy having careened through the core of the larger system, which was probably once a normal spiral similar to the Milky Way. Like a pebble tossed in a lake, the collision sent a ripple of energy into space, plowing gas and dust in front of it.

Expanding at a rate of more than 300,000 km/h, this cosmic tsunami left a burst of new star creation in its wake. Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, including the one shown here, have resolved bright blue knots that are gigantic clusters of newborn stars and immense loops and bubbles blown into space by supernovae.

Sounds incredibly violent, but it sure makes a pretty picture!

Check back next week for another WITU challenge!

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