Tuesday, July 26, 2022

M74 (NGC 628) - The Phantom Galaxy

Spiral galaxy Messier 74 (also known as NGC 628) lies some 32 million light-years away toward the constellation Pisces. An island universe of about 100 billion stars with two prominent spiral arms, M74 has long been admired by astronomers as a perfect example of a grand-design spiral galaxy. M74's central region is brought into a stunning, sharp focus in this recently processed image using publicly available data from the James Webb Space Telescope. The colorized combination of image data sets is from two of Webb's instruments NIRcam and MIRI, operating at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths. It reveals cooler stars and dusty structures in the grand-design spiral galaxy only hinted at in previous space-based views.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, APODRobert Eder

Glowing Dust of Messier 74
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Judy Schmidt

M74/NGC628 with JWST MIRI
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Gabriel Brammer (Cosmic Dawn Center, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen); Raw data, Janice Lee et al. and the PHANGS-JWST collaboration.

NGC 628 NIRCam
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Thomas Thomopoulos
JWST image of M74 with its Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI)
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team. Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt
M74 - combined optical/mid-infrared image, featuring data from both the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team; ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar. Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt

M74 - Comparing Hubble, NIRCam and MIRISci

Hubble and Webb Showcase M74

Explore JWST PHANGS MIRI imagery of NGC 628. Pan, zoom, and compare filters - click the “eye” icons in the image panel to toggle visibility of the different layers.