See The Five Breathtaking New ‘Fireworks’ Images Of Galaxies Close To Our Milky Way

An international team of astronomers exploring the mystery of how stars are born have taken spectacular new images of some of the closest galaxies to our own Milky Way.

Showing nearby galaxies as “galactic fireworks,” the images were taken using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and two telescopes in Chile’s Atacama desert—the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). 

Together the three telescopes scanned our galactic neighbours at different wavelengths—visible (VLT), near-infrared (Hubble) and sub-millimetre (ALMA), with each wavelength range unveiling different characteristics in each galaxy in different colors.

“By combining observations from some of the world’s most powerful telescopes, we can examine the galactic regions where star formation is happening, compared to where it is expected to happen,” said Dr Rebecca McElroy from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney, part of the international research team. “This will give us a chance to better understand what triggers, boosts or holds back the birth of new stars.”

Stars are born when clouds of cold gas ignite to become stars, but the beginning of the process is little understood. The combined images show the locations of young stars and the gas that warms up around them.

The work is part of the PHANGS (Physics at High Angular Resolution in Nearby GalaxieS) survey, which uses the VLT and ALMA.

What is the VLT?

The world's most advanced optical instrument, the VLT has four telescopes each with 8.2m diameter mirrors and four movable 1.8m diameter auxiliary telescopes. Together they allow astronomers to see details up to 25 times finer than with the individual telescopes. An instrument attached to the VLT called the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, or MUSE was used for these observations. MUSE collects the spectra of light fro cosmic objects; for this project it looked at 30,000 clouds of warm gas and collected about 15 million spectra of different galactic regions. 

“MUSE has given us an unprecedented view of what’s going on inside galaxies,” said Dr Brent Groves, a PHANGS team member from the University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR). 

What is ALMA?

Near San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile, ALMA is one of the highest and driest astronomical observatory sites on Earth. It combines radio wavelength signals from 66 dish-shaped antennas all positioned at an altitude of 4,576 to 5044 meters, which together make one single radio telescope. Used to study molecular gas and dust, ALMA is more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope.

The ALMA observations allowed astronomers to map about 100,000 cold-gas regions across 90 nearby galaxies, producing an unprecedentedly sharp atlas of stellar nurseries in the close Universe.

“By combining these observations with those from ALMA, we’re able to see newborn stars while they’re still surrounded by the blanket of gas they’ve formed from,” said Groves. “The resulting images are absolutely stunning—they allow us a spectacularly colourful insight into the stellar nurseries of our neighbouring galaxies.”

Here are the five new “galactic fireworks” images:

NGC 3627: a spiral galaxy located approximately 31 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo.

NGC 4254: a grand-design spiral galaxy located approximately 45 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices.

NGC 4303: a spiral galaxy, with a bar of stars and gas at its centre, located approximately 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

NGC 1087: a spiral galaxy located approximately 80 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cetus.

NGC 1300: a spiral galaxy, with a bar of stars and gas at its centre, located approximately 61 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.