Hubble captures jewel-bright spiral galaxy NGC 4689

This NASA/ESA Hubble House Telescope picture exhibits the jewel-bright spiral galaxy NGC 4689, which lies 54 million light-years from Earth within the constellation Coma Berenices. This constellation has the excellence of being the one one of many 88 constellations formally acknowledged by the Worldwide Astronomical Union (IAU) as one named after the historic determine, Queen Berenice II of Egypt.

The Latin phrase “coma” references her hair, which implies that NGC 4689 lies within the hair of a queen. Some folks of Berenice’s time would have meant this fairly actually, because the story goes that her courtroom astronomer thought {that a} lacking lock of Berenice’s hair had been catasterized (a phrase that means “positioned among the many stars”) by the gods: therefore the title of the constellation, Coma Berenices.

NGC 4689 holds an fascinating—albeit much less royal—place in trendy astronomy. The universe is so extremely huge that at a distance of 54 million light-years NGC 4689 is comparatively close by for a galaxy. This picture consists of information from two units of observations, one made in 2019, the opposite in 2024 , and each are a part of applications that noticed a number of “close by” galaxies.

The 2024 observing program is an fascinating instance of how Hubble—an awfully productive telescope for greater than three many years—and the James Webb House Telescope complement one another. Observations collected by Webb stand to rework our understanding of how galaxies change and evolve over time, by offering infrared information at an unprecedented degree of element and readability. Nonetheless, ultraviolet and visual mild observations from Hubble—resembling these used to create this picture—complement Webb’s observations.

On this case, the Hubble information supply a extra correct evaluation of the stellar populations of close by galaxies, which is essential to understanding their evolution. Hubble and Webb observations play an essential position in growing our understanding of how galaxies type and evolve, and observations of NGC 4689 are a beneficial a part of that quest for information. Actually, Hubble featured an image of the galaxy before, in 2020.