Hubble Observes Grand Design Spiral Galaxy

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured an absolutely beautiful image of the spiral galaxy NGC 5643.

NGC 5643 is located approximately 55 million light-years away in the constellation of Lupus.

The galaxy is classified as a grand design spiral because of its prominent and graceful spiral arms.

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Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Riess et al / Mahdi Zamani.

This Hubble image shows NGC 5643, a grand design spiral galaxy some 55 million light-years away in the constellation of Lupus. The color image is composed of infrared and optical observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). It is based on data obtained through four filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.

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Spiral galaxies are pancake-shaped collections of billions of stars, along with vast clouds of gas and dust. This video illustrates how their observed shapes can differ greatly depending upon the angle at which they are observed.

The spiral galaxies NGC 4302 (left) and NGC 4298 (right) are visualized in three dimensions and rotated to showcase how they might look if viewed from other perspectives. Each galaxy could be seen as a roughly circular face-on spiral, as a long, thin, edge-on spiral, or as any of the oblong shapes in between.