NASA Hubble Telescope Captures Spiral Galaxy 70 Million Light Years Away From Earth

You just can't keep NASA's Hubble Space Telescope out of action. The famous set of eyes in space have now chronicled the NGC 972, a spiral galaxy. The galaxy was first discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel in 1784.

Bright, colorful pockets of star formation are blooming in this spiral galaxy just under 70 million light-years away seen by @NASAHubble. The orange-pink glow is created as hydrogen gas reacts to the intense light streaming outwards from newborn stars: https://t.co/szYcHdSbun pic.twitter.com/ij9cjqwvU0

— NASA (@NASA) July 6, 2019

It's not as close as the Andromeda Galaxy and is located around 70 million light years away. But you won't feel the distance with Hubble's latest image. The orange-pink appearance of the galaxy shows the presence of hydrogen gas which is the key element for star formation. the dark patches represent the cosmic dust.

Hubble Space Telescope is NASA's frequent source of such images. It was launched back in 1990 and has received numerous upgrades over time. The telescope is expected to continue its stellar imagery for another 10-20 years.

But NASA doesn't want to take any chances and will be launching its successor - the James Webb Space Telescope in early 2021. The new telescope will be a huge upgrade over the Hubble telescope and will be able to peek into deep space.

Speaking of Hubble Telescope, it recently snapped cosmic fireworks which are expected to be happening for almost 170 years now. These fireworks started when a super-massive star underwent a celestial outburst.

Hubble data shows that the expanding gases of the star in a double-star system 7,500 light-years away are glowing in red, white and blue. The explosions are taking shape of a bipolar ballooning lobes gas, filaments, and dust said the US space agency.

The telescope used its Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 to snap a tiny galaxy called ESO 495-21 which resides in the constellation of Pyxis, 30 million light-years away from Earth.

The galaxy is 3000 light-years across, which is nowhere close to the sheer size of our Milky Way, which is 100,000 light-years across. But it could help astronomers unfold the secrets to the evolution of galaxies over time, and what causes the expansion of a galaxy.