The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an absolutely gorgeous photo of a spiral galaxy called NGC 691.
It is an unbarred (barless) spiral galaxy located about 125 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Aries. This galaxy was discovered by the British astronomer William Herschel on November 13, 1786 and is part of a collection of nine galaxies of very varied shapes and colors.
Also known as LEDA 6793, UGC 1305, and TC 448 in various astronomical catalogs, NGC 691 is 130,000 light-years in diameter . It features a multi-ring structure, with three rings recognized in infrared light.
"Objects like NGC 691 are observed by Hubble using a range of filters," the Hubble astronomers explained. "Each filter allows only certain wavelengths of light to reach Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Images collected with different filters are then colored by specialized visual artists who can make informed decisions about which color best corresponds to what filter ?
As explained by the astronomers responsible for Hubble, “by combining the color images of the individual filters, a full color image of the astronomical object can be recreated. In this way, we can get a very good insight into the nature and appearance of these objects.”
Reference: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Riess / M. Zamani.
