Incoming material has condensed to form a ring of newborn stars in the galaxy NGC 1097, which sits some 45 million light years away in the southern constellation Fornax.
The pupil of this cosmic eye is a monstrous black hole weighing 100 million times the mass of the sun – about 20 times as heavy as the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The fuzzy blue dot (left) is a companion galaxy.
The dust in the galaxy's spiral arms and in the swirling spokes between them glows red in this infrared image, which was captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope before it ran out of coolant in May. Spitzer plans to begin its new "warm" mission soon, operating at 31 ° above absolute zero – 27 degrees warmer than before. The temperature increase means the telescope's own heat will interfere with observations of extremely cold objects, which radiate at long wavelengths. That will limit its high-resolution observations to shorter wavelengths. (Image: NASA/JPL/The SINGS Team /SSC/Caltech)
The pupil of this cosmic eye is a monstrous black hole weighing 100 million times the mass of the sun – about 20 times as heavy as the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The fuzzy blue dot (left) is a companion galaxy.
The dust in the galaxy's spiral arms and in the swirling spokes between them glows red in this infrared image, which was captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope before it ran out of coolant in May. Spitzer plans to begin its new "warm" mission soon, operating at 31 ° above absolute zero – 27 degrees warmer than before. The temperature increase means the telescope's own heat will interfere with observations of extremely cold objects, which radiate at long wavelengths. That will limit its high-resolution observations to shorter wavelengths. (Image: NASA/JPL/The SINGS Team /SSC/Caltech)
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