The darkness within?
This atmospheric image shows a galaxy named Messier 85, captured in all its delicate, hazy glory by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Messier 85 slants through the constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair), and lies around 50 million light-years from Earth. It was first discovered by Charles Messier’s colleague Pierre Méchain in 1781, and is included in the Messier catalogue of celestial objects.
Messier 85 is intriguing — its properties lie somewhere between those of a lenticular and an elliptical galaxy, and it appears to be interacting with two of its neighbours: the beautiful spiral NGC 4394, located out of frame to the upper left, and the small elliptical MCG 3-32-38, located out of frame to the centre bottom.
The galaxy contains some 400 billion stars, most of which are very old. However, the central region hosts a population of relatively young stars of just a few billion years in age; these stars are thought to have formed in a late burst of star formation, likely triggered as Messier 85 merged with another galaxy over four billion years ago. Messier 85 has a further potentially strange quality. Almost every galaxy is thought to have a supermassive black hole at its centre, but from measurements of the velocities of stars in this galaxy, it is unclear whether Messier 85 contains such a black hole.
This image combines infrared, visible and ultraviolet observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.
Credit:ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. O'Connell
About the Image
Id: | potw1905a |
Type: | Observation |
Release date: | 4 February 2019, 06:00 |
Size: | 3860 x 4079 px |
About the Object
Name: | Messier 85 |
Type: | Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Elliptical |
Distance: | 50 million light years |
Constellation: | Coma Berenices |
Category: | Galaxies |
Image Formats
Wallpapers
Coordinates
Position (RA): | 12 25 24.00 |
Position (Dec): | 18° 11' 16.55" |
Field of view: | 2.55 x 2.69 arcminutes |
Orientation: | North is 0.1° right of vertical |
Colours & filters
Band | Wavelength | Telescope |
---|---|---|
Optical u | 336 nm |
Hubble Space Telescope
WFC3 |
Optical B | 438 nm |
Hubble Space Telescope
WFC3 |
Optical V | 555 nm |
Hubble Space Telescope
WFC3 |
Optical I | 814 nm |
Hubble Space Telescope
WFC3 |