Day 5 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: Colorful Stars of All Ages

"ESA / Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko Day 5 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: Colorful Stars of All Ages. About 100 million light-years away, spiral galaxy NGC 6000 is home to countless stars across its disc, which is approximately 66,600 light-years wide. The stars toward the center tend to be older and cooler, emitting a more yellow light, seen here in this Hubble image, streaked by lanes of darker gas and dust."

"The stars toward the center tend to be older and cooler, emitting a more yellow light, seen here in this Hubble image, streaked by lanes of darker gas and dust. Toward the outer arms of the galaxy, the stars are younger, hotter, and more massive, casting an overall bluer hue. See the full advent calendar here, where a new image will be revealed each day until December 25."

Spiral galaxy NGC 6000 lies about 100 million light-years away and spans roughly 66,600 light-years across. Its disc contains countless stars distributed from a yellow-hued central region to bluer outer spiral arms. Stars near the center are older and cooler, emitting more yellow light, and the central region is streaked by lanes of darker gas and dust. Stars in the outer arms are younger, hotter, and more massive, producing an overall bluer hue across those regions. The image was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and is part of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar.

Read at The Atlantic