The Hubble Space Telescope imaged the spiral galaxy Mrk. The image was taken by A. Riess et al.
The Hubble Space Telescope is trying to chart the expansion rate of our universe.
The stars of the spiral galaxy Mrk are visible 120 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo. This image was rendered in false color by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Astronomers gain more perspective on the structure of our galaxy, the Milky Way, if it's of the same type as this one. "Mrk 1337 is a weakly barred spiral galaxy, which as the name suggests means that the spiral arms are from a central bar of gas and stars," European Space Agency representatives wrote in a statement about the image.
The Hubble Space Telescope has the best images.
The image was part of a campaign to figure out how fast the universe is expanding. Adam Riess, a professor of physics and astronomy at The John'sHopkins University in Baltimore, won the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics for showing that the universe is speeding up as it expands.
Riess is hoping to refine the rate of acceleration because the universe is expanding faster than expected, and back in 2019: suggested we might need new physics to solve the issue of what is being observed compared to what models predict.
Riess said in a statement that the mismatch was impossible to dismiss as a coincidence.
He has said that there are hidden forces that influence the expansion rate and that disputes about the "Hubble constant" of the universe's expansion point to them.
The rate of expansion between large objects is one way of measuring the constant. Astronomers are once again using the Hubble telescope as they seek to refine the rate, because it was key to the 2011 Nobel Prize.
There is a lot of data to process as Hubble engineers slowly bring its instruments back online after a glitch. The Hubble telescope was last serviced by astronauts in 2009, shortly before the space shuttle retired.
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