Spiral Galaxy M74: A Sharper View
Beautiful 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.