Views of a huge spiral galaxy taken by the Hubble telescope reveal a great mystery
The Hubble Space Telescope is studying the spiral galaxy in detail to help astronomers improve their measurements of the vast distances of space.
NGC 7038 is a huge, oval-shaped spiral galaxy with four blue spiral arms orbiting it and a bright pale yellow center. Threads of orange dust also emanate from the heart of the giant hive of stars, with vast numbers of others galaxy visible in the background.
The image was created from over 15 hours of observations from Hubble Space TelescopeWide Field Camera 3. The purpose of this time-consuming exercise is to calibrate the two most common distance measurement techniques that use Type IA supernova stars and Cepheid variables, Hubble scientists wrote in a statement. Light from Type IA supernovae diminishes as they spread out, while variable Cepheids are stars that brighten and dim at a constant rate, which also allows their luminosity to be calculated and used to determine distance.
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Accurately determining distances to objects in the night sky was one of Hubble’s original scientific goals, and NGC 7038 is particularly helpful to astronomers measuring distances on vast cosmic scales.
In more than three decades of operation, the telescope has helped shed light on one of the most intriguing unsolved problems in astronomy, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The A mature Hubble — which, like the iconic telescope, is named after the late astronomer Edwin Hubble — describes how quickly The universe is expanding. Despite increasing accuracymeasurements by the Hubble telescope could not reconcile the different values determined by other observatories.
This puzzling discrepancy between the two values of the Hubble constant suggests that a new discovery in cosmology is waiting for its time, ESA scientists said in a statement. The James Webb Space Telescopewith its vast new capabilities, may help solve this mystery in the coming years.
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