Catalog Page for PIA11796

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PIA11796: Spitzer Space Telescope's View of Galaxy Messier 101

The galaxy Messier 101 is a swirling spiral of stars, gas, and dust. Messier 101 is nearly twice as wide as our Milky Way galaxy in this image as seen by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Target Name:	Messier 101
Mission:	Hubble Space Telescope Spitzer Space Telescope
Instrument:	IRAC
Product Size:	7200 x 7200 pixels (w x h)
Produced By:	California Institute of Technology
Full-Res TIFF:	PIA11796.tif (155.5 MB)
Full-Res JPEG:	PIA11796.jpg (2.86 MB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

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The galaxy Messier 101 is a swirling spiral of stars, gas, and dust. Messier 101 is nearly twice as wide as our Milky Way galaxy. Spitzer's view, taken in infrared light, reveals the galaxy's delicate dust lanes as yellow-green filaments. Such dense dust clouds are where new stars can form. In this image, dust warmed by the light of hot, young stars glows red. The rest of the galaxy's hundreds of billions of stars are less prominent and form a blue haze. Astronomers can use infrared light to examine the dust clouds where stars are born.

Image Credit:

NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI

Image Addition Date:

2009-02-10