Thursday, June 04, 2026

Galaxy IC 4653 in Ara: A Familiar Sight | Hubble Space Telescope

Galaxy IC 4653 in Ara: A Familiar Sight | Hubble Space Telescope

This image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope shows IC 4653, a galaxy just above 80 million light-years from Earth. This may sound like quite a distance, but it is not that far on a cosmic scale. At these kinds of distances, the types and structures of the objects we see are similar to those in our local area.

Thie galaxy's whirling arms tells us a story about what is happening inside this galaxy. Stars are generally brighter and bluer when they are younger, so the blue patches mark sites of new star formation. Studying the structures of other galaxies is a key way to learn about the structure of our own, given that humans cannot leave the Milky Way to look back and see what it looks like from the outside. It helps to compare our observations of our home galaxy with those of nearby galaxies we can see in their entirety. 


Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Rosario (CEA, Durham University)
Release Date: Oct. 21, 2019

#NASA #ESA #Hubble #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Galaxies #IC4653 #SpiralGalaxy #AraConstellation #Cosmos #Universe #HST #HubbleSpaceTelescope #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #Europe #STEM #Education

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