Hubble Captures Bright Spiral in ‘Queen’s Hair’

May 24. () –

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the bright spiral galaxy NGC 4689, which is located 54 million light years from Earth in the constellation of Coma Berenices.

This constellation has the distinction of being the only one of the 88 constellations officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to be named after the historical figure, Queen Berenice II of Egypt.

The Latin word “coma” refers to her hair, which means that NGC 4689 is found in the hair of a queen. Some people of Berenice’s time would have meant this quite literally, as the story goes that the astronomer at her court thought the gods had catasterized (a word meaning “placed among the stars”) a missing lock of hair. of Berenice: hence the name of the constellation Coma Berenices, explains NASA.

NGC 4689 occupies an interesting, if less real, place in modern astronomy. The universe is so incredibly vast that, at a distance of 54 million light years, NGC 4689 is relatively close for a galaxy. This image includes data from two sets of observations, one made in 2019 and the other in 2024, and both are part of programs that observed multiple “nearby” galaxies.

For the space agency, the 2024 observing program is an interesting example of how Hubble (an extraordinarily productive telescope for more than three decades) and the James Webb Space Telescope complement each other.

The observations collected by Webb can transform our understanding of how galaxies change and evolve over time, providing infrared data with an unprecedented level of detail and clarity. However, Hubble’s ultraviolet and visible light observations, like those used to create this image, complement Webb’s observations.

In this case, Hubble data offer a more precise assessment of the stellar populations of nearby galaxies, which is crucial for understanding their evolution. Observations from Hubble and Webb play an important role in developing our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve, and observations of NGC 4689 are a valuable part of that quest for knowledge. In fact, Hubble presented an image of the galaxy earlier, in 2020.