Friday, June 1, 2012

A Rainbow Pinwheel Galaxy

This spiral galaxy is named M101, but those who live there probably have a better name for it (after all, we call our galaxy the Milky Way). The lovely picture is a composite of images taken by the Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra, and GALEX telescopes and observatories. Yes, four different image sources! There’s a short overview of how to interpret the different colors at Bad Astronomy.
(Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; IR & UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA/STScI)

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