{"id":207999,"date":"2025-04-30T02:44:36","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T16:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?guid=131a3c2477060d01ffb807fc2aa39386"},"modified":"2025-04-30T02:44:36","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T16:44:36","slug":"hubble-spots-a-squid-in-the-whale-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=207999","title":{"rendered":"Hubble Spots\u00a0a Squid in the Whale"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"A<\/a><\/figure>
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ESA\/Hubble & NASA, L. C. Ho, D. Thilker<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Today\u2019s rather aquatic-themed NASA\/ESA Hubble Space Telescope<\/a> image features the spiral galaxy Messier 77<\/a>, also known as the Squid Galaxy, which sits 45 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale).<\/p>\n

The designation Messier 77 comes from the galaxy\u2019s place in the famous catalog compiled by the French astronomer Charles Messier<\/a>. Another French astronomer, Pierre M\u00e9chain, discovered the galaxy in 1780. Both Messier and M\u00e9chain were comet hunters who cataloged nebulous objects that could be mistaken for comets.<\/p>\n

Messier, M\u00e9chain, and other astronomers of their time mistook the Squid Galaxy for either a spiral nebula or a star cluster. This mischaracterization isn\u2019t surprising. More than a century would pass between the discovery of the Squid Galaxy and the realization that the \u2018spiral nebulae\u2019 scattered across the sky were not part of our galaxy but were in fact separate galaxies millions of light-years away. The Squid Galaxy\u2019s appearance through a small telescope \u2014 an intensely bright center surrounded by a fuzzy cloud \u2014 closely resembles one or more stars wreathed in a nebula.<\/p>\n

The name \u2018Squid Galaxy\u2019 is recent, and stems from the extended, filamentary structure that curls around the galaxy\u2019s disk like the tentacles of a squid. The Squid Galaxy is a great example of how advances in technology and scientific understanding can completely change our perception of an astronomical object \u2014 and even what we call it!<\/p>\n

Hubble previously released an image of M77<\/a> in 2013. This new image incorporates recent observations made with different filters and updated image processing techniques which allow astronomers to see the galaxy in more detail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s rather aquatic-themed NASA\/ESA\u00a0Hubble Space Telescope\u00a0image features the spiral galaxy\u00a0Messier 77, also known as the Squid Galaxy, which sits 45 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale). The designation Messier 77 comes from the galaxy\u2019s place in the famous catalog compiled by the French astronomer\u00a0Charles Messier. Another French astronomer, Pierre M\u00e9chain, discovered the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=207999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208000,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207999\/revisions\/208000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=207999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=207999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=207999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}