(click on image to enlarge)
From NASA/ ESA, November 8, 2021: This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy Mrk 1337, which is roughly 120 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 snapped Mrk 1337 at a wide range of ultraviolet, visible and infrared wavelengths, producing this richly detailed image. Mrk 1337 is a weakly barred spiral galaxy, which as the name suggests means that the spiral arms radiate from a central bar of gas and stars. Bars occur in roughly half of spiral galaxies, including our own galaxy the Milky Way.
These observations are part of a campaign to improve our knowledge of how fast the universe is expanding. They were proposed by Adam Riess, who was awarded a Nobel Laureate in physics 2011 for his contributions to the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe, alongside Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.
(This is your occasional reminder that, given the speed at which light travels, this is an image of this galaxy that we're seeing today as it appeared roughly 120 million years ago.)
