For Americans, this photo reminds of the sparkling Christmas wreath. For us it's just a spectacular photo
Usually during the holidays, members of the Hubble Space Telescope's heritage team try to find an image that captures the holiday spirit. In the past, we have seen from space star clusters reminiscent of Christmas trees, and nebulae that look like ghosts for Halloween, now NASA has released the spectacular image of the galaxy M74, described as an early Christmas message from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The galaxy, number 74 on Monsieur's list, is reminiscent of a sparkling Christmas wreath, bright knots of glowing gas peeking out of the galaxy's arms, and star-forming regions glowing pink.
M74 is one of the best examples of a perfect spiral galaxy, very similar to the Milky Way. In the case of M74, it faces us, so we can see in great detail all its parts and structure. The bright pink regions in the arms of the galaxy are vast but short-lived clouds of hydrogen gas glowing with the light of newborn stars. The dark dust plumes that stretch along the spiral arms contain a new generation of blue stars.
M74 was first discovered by French astronomer Pierre Mechin in 1780 and was added to Messier's catalog of deep space objects. Of all the objects in the catalog, this is actually one of the faintest and has even been nicknamed the "ghost galaxy" by amateur astronomers trying to locate it with telescopes.
But now thanks to Hubble it can now be seen in great detail.
