The Great Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365 was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in this image. It is located in the constellation Fornax (The Furnace), about 60 million light years from Earth. Photo credits: ESA / Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST team, Credit: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)
About 60 million light years from Earth, the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365 is in this image from the NASA/ ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The blue and fiery orange swirls in the constellation Fornax (The Furnace) show us where stars have just formed and in which dusty places future star kindergartens.
Enormous star-forming regions within NGC 1365 can be seen at the outer edge of the image. The bright, light blue regions indicate the presence of hundreds of baby stars formed from the merging of gas and dust in the galaxy’s outer arms.
This Hubble image was taken as part of a joint study with the Atacama Large Millimeter / Submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. The survey will help scientists understand how the variety of galaxy environments observed in the nearby universe, including NGC 1365 and previous ESA / Hubble images of the week such as NGC 2835 and NGC 2775, affect the formation of stars and star clusters. It is expected that over 100,000 gas clouds and star-forming regions outside of our surroundings will be imaged Milky WayThe PHANGS survey is expected to uncover and clarify many of the relationships between cold gas clouds, star formation, and the overall shape and morphology of galaxies.
