The latest image of Messier 90, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows a technological advance compared to previous photographs taken in 1994.

This new image shows the galaxy’s bright core, dust disk, and gas halo, enhanced by the Wide Field Camera 3 installed in 2010.

The striking spiral galaxy seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image is Messier 90 (M90, also NGC 4569) in the constellation Virgo. In 2019, Hubble released an image of M90 (see below) using data from the legacy Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2); the data were taken in 1994, shortly after the camera was installed. This image has a characteristic staircase pattern due to the placement of the WFPC2 sensors. WFPC2 was replaced by the more advanced Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in 2010, and Hubble used WFC3 in 2019 and 2023 when it returned the aperture to Messier 90. The resulting data was processed to create this striking new image (above). It provides a much more complete view of the galaxy’s dusty disk, gaseous halo, and bright core.

The inner regions of M90’s disk are star-forming regions, highlighted here by red H-alpha light from the nebulae, but not in the rest of the galaxy. M90 is among the galaxies in the relatively nearby Virgo Cluster, and its orbit took it on a path near the center of the cluster about three hundred million years ago. The density of gas in the inner cluster pushed against M90 like a strong wind, stripping a large amount of gas from the galaxy and forming the diffuse halo that can be seen around it. This gas is no longer available for M90 to form new stars, and as a result, it will eventually fade away as a spiral galaxy.

Although M90 is 55 million light-years away from Earth, it is one of the few galaxies that comes close to us. Its orbit within the Virgo cluster has accelerated it so much that it leaves the cluster entirely and moves in our direction; Other galaxies in the Virgo cluster have been measured at similar speeds but in the opposite direction. . Over the next billion years, we will be able to better see M90 ​​transforming into a lenticular galaxy.