Distant NGC 3137 reveals clues about our own galaxy

$A detailed telescope image of a star-forming region, showing dramatic pillars and billowing clouds of gas and dust in vivid shades of orange, red, and brown, contrasting with cooler blue nebulosity in the upper left. A tall, dark pillar dominates the center with a bright jet of material streaming from its tip, illuminated by nearby stars. Smaller pillars and sculpted gas structures are visible throughout, and several bright foreground stars with diffraction spikes are scattered across the scene.$

Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI

Photograph of a spiral galaxy tilted diagonally across the frame, with a glowing golden-tan core threaded with brown dust lanes and pink star-forming regions. Blue-white spiral arms and clusters of young stars extend outward from the core toward the upper right and lower left. A bright blue-white star with prominent diffraction spikes sits just below the core, and several other foreground stars with spikes are scattered across the dark background, along with a few small orange background galaxies. — Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker and the PHANGS-HST Team

Glittering star clusters and ruby-colored emission nebulae pepper the star-studded spiral arms of NGC 3137. The galaxy, which spans nearly 140,000 light-years, spills out of this Hubble image’s frame. The nebulae are stellar nurseries, glowing with emission from hydrogen atoms excited by the massive stars forming inside. The bluish star clusters represent the next stage in the galaxy’s evolution, after radiation from these young stars blows the surrounding gas away. The galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole of about 60 million solar masses in its core. Astronomers suspect NGC 3137 and its large spiral neighbor, NGC 3175, mimic the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies in our Local Group. Dozens of smaller dwarf galaxies in both groups enhance their similarities. NGC 3137 lies some 53 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Antlia the Air Pump.

Richard Talcott is a former senior editor and current contributing editor of Astronomy.

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