Pink Pinwheel

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hub­ble Her­itage Team (STScI/AURA)

Vast clouds of hydro­gen gas cre­ate a pink­ish pin­wheel in this NASA Hub­ble Space Tele­scope image of NGC 3982.

Explore the wind­ing arms of the face-on spi­ral. NGC 3982 spans about 30,000 light-years; one-third the size of our Milky Way Galaxy. The pink areas are huge clouds of glow­ing hydro­gen gas pro­vid­ing a rich birth­place for stars. New­born star clus­ters of blue stars extend to the edges of the galaxy. Lanes of dark dust entwine the spi­ral arms and will pro­vide new mate­r­ial for the next gen­er­a­tion of star for­ma­tion. Older, yel­low and white stars pack NGC 3982’s tightly wound core.

Astronomers used spe­cial fil­ters to high­light the col­ors of the pink hydro­gen star clouds and to show light that is nor­mally invis­i­ble to our eyes.

NGC 3982 is a fairly close galaxy about 68 mil­lion light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion Ursa Major, the Great Bear.