Located about 40 million light years away in the constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish), this galaxy is classified as a grand design spiral. It was discovered over 200 years ago by James Dunlop, a Scottish astronomer. The two prominent spiral arms are traced by bright blue star clusters and dark dust lanes. This image was colorized by Leo Shatz from three greyscale Hubble images. It appeared in the 2 July 2019 Astronomy Picture of the Day. What follows this image are three more examples all oriented the same to make easier visual comparisons.
I tried my hand at colorizing the image with limited success. The colors didn’t come out quite to my liking.
In 2012, this galaxy was imaged by Hubble using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. This colorized version was created by Flickr user Det58. I think he created a very pleasing version. Bear in mind, the colors are not what the human eye would actually see. They are dependent upon choice of original greyscales and software used by the author.
The final example of imaging this galaxy comes more recently from the James Webb Space Telescope. It gives us the sharpest and most distant views into deep space especially in the far infrared. It was published in late November 2022 and colorized by citizen scientist Judy Schmidt from some of the JWST greyscale images observed by the MIRI instrument. The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) uses a camera and spectrograph to see light in the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. These wavelengths are longer than our eyes see. This image reveals large amounts of dust and gas around star-forming regions revealed as a pinkish glow in the spiral arms.
How I See It 
It’s beautiful, Jim. Merry Christmas to you both!
Thank you. Merry Christmas to you.
Merry Christmas to you and Melanie. I might have posted this on New Year’s Day as the bloodshot eyeball of god after a new year’s eve party.
Hah! It does kind of look like that. Merry Christmas to you as well.
Say, it does actually look like an eyeball. After the last two years, my credulity has expanded! The best to you, Jim, Jim and Melanie.
Thank you, Jim. We hope you have had a relaxing day. May the coming year prove interesting and enjoyable. Peace to you.
Nice
Very fine post and photos! However, I thought you made a mistake when you said the galaxy was 40 billion light years away. How can we see anything further than about 14 billion light years away: 14 billion years being the age of the universe. I have since read several articles on how that is possible. It is complicated. 😀
Thank you for catching that incorrect word. I changed it to million. Now it is much less complicated. 🙂
Actually, it opened a lot of doors for me. Did you know our vision of the universe is 46 billion light years? Like I said, very, very complicated.
I did not know that.
I don’t completely understand it.
It is an effect of the expansion of space.
The light from objects near the edge of our observable Universe might take about 13.8 billion years to complete its journey towards us.
Meantime, the object itself is receding from us because the Universe is expanding. By the time the light emitted 13.8 billion light years ago eventually reaches us, the actual distance of the object from us has increased to 46 billion light years.
Thanks Mr. Greybeard. It is quite a concept. It would be like travelling on a highway at 60 miles an hour, after an hour you should be 60 miles away from the starting point. However, if the highway is getting longer (or expanding) as the car is travelling at its fixed 60 miles an hour it will be further away than 60 miles. I get the mathematics, but the nature of the universe boggles my mind. Happy New Year!
Beautiful…colorization, like art, is open to interpretation and viewpoint and to some degree…technology. I’m fond of purple so I prefer the first image.
It seems a jeweler could turn these into brooches.
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