Astronomers have revealed a nearby spiral galaxy in all its brilliant glory, shining in thousands of colors.
The stunning wide-angle image of the Sculptor galaxy, released on Wednesday, was taken by a telescope in Chile and is so detailed that it’s already being used as a star-filled map.
Researchers utilized the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to examine the galaxy over a span of approximately 50 hours, combining over 100 individual exposures to create this image.
The image spans 65,000 light-years, almost the entire galaxy. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
NGC 253, known as the Sculptor galaxy, is classified as a starburst galaxy due to its intense star-forming activity. Situated 11 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor in the Southern Hemisphere, it can be easily observed with binoculars or small telescopes.
“The Sculptor galaxy is in a sweet spot,” the observatory’s Enrico Congiu, who led the research, said in a statement. “It is close enough that we can resolve its internal structure and study its building blocks with incredible detail, but at the same time, big enough that we can still see it as a whole system.”
The more shades of color from stars, gas, and dust in a galaxy, the more clues to their age, composition, and motion, according to the scientists.
Sculptor’s latest snapshot contains thousands of colors — a glowing montage of purples, pinks, and yellows — compared with just a handful for traditional pictures.
The team has already discovered 500 planetary nebulae, clouds of gas and dust from dying stars that can serve as cosmic mile markers.
Their research has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
