The Hubble continues to spy on the Earth's neighbors. Most of the data that it sends back is used by scientist to find out what else human could expect from life in the outer space. The Hubble recently sent an image of the Messier 90, an amazing spiral galaxy. The images seem to show that it is close to Earth but it is in fact 60 million light years away from the Milky Way. It is located near the Virgo constellation. The galaxy is, in fact, a part of the Virgo Cluster which is made up of about different types of galaxies that is 1,200 strong ones.
Ultraviolet, infrared and visible light all make up the image that was sent back to Earth. It was taken using the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on the NASA Hubble Space Telescope. The camera used is made up of four light detectors that overlap each other in their field views. One of the cameras gave a rather higher magnification compared to what the other three gave. When all the images were put into one photo, the image with the higher magnification needed to resized in order for all the images to align properly. This gave the image that looks like the steps in a staircase.
Messier 90 is considered as one of the more remarkable galaxies in existence in space. It is also seen as a galaxy that is traveling near the Earth and not away from it. The light from the galaxy shows an incoming motion that has been known as the blueshift phenomenon. Simply put, the light wavelength moves towards us. This movement pushes the light makes it all compressed and turned blue at the end of the spectrum.
As the universe is seen to expand, most of the galaxies that surround the Milky Way seem to be moving farther. This is the reason why most of these galaxies are seen as red lights because they are moving towards the redshift of the spectrum. This new image of the Messier 90 send by the Hubble appears to be a rare exception.
There is still much to be learned about the galaxies around us. And although the cluster itself is moving away from our galaxy, some of its constituent galaxies, like the Messier 90, is moving faster than the rest, making it seem as if it is moving towards us. Some of the galaxies in the cluster may be moving in the other direction making it seem as if it is moving far away from us in a faster velocity.
