(ORDO NEWS) — This is a composite image of the Pinwheel Galaxy (M 101), 21 million light-years from Earth.
This galaxy, showing active star formation, is about 70% larger than the Milky Way . Recall that the diameter of our Galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years.
The image was created by combining infrared, visible, ultraviolet and X-ray data from four NASA space telescopes.
The image shows that both young (cyan and blue) and old (yellow and red) stars are evenly distributed along the tightly wound spiral arms of the Pinwheel.
Purple shows the hottest regions where millions of degrees Celsius of gas is concentrated, massive stars explode and matter collides with black holes.
It is worth noting that the youngest stars in the Pinwheel Galaxy are only about one million years old.
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