Stunning ‘best-ever’ photo of distant Whirlpool galaxy caught by Nasa has head-scrambling secret

A photo described as the “best-ever” of distant Whirlpool galaxy caught by Nasa has a hidden secret.

Stunning ‘best-ever’ photo of distant Whirlpool galaxy caught by Nasa has head-scrambling secret. Picture: ESA/Webb

Space scientists have revealed a mesmerising image of a stunning whirlpool galaxy.

The celestial snapshot is being hailed as the clearest-ever image of the famous Whirlpool galaxy and it was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Also referred to as M51, the swirling space object in the image actually hides a secret.

Technically it doesn’t look like that anymore, The Sun reports.

We’re seeing it as it was almost 30 million years back in time due to the speed of light.

The galaxy is about 27 million light-years away from Earth.

Light from the Sun takes about 8.3 minutes to reach Earth so we technically view the Sun as it was 8.3 minutes ago.

That same logic applies to other objects in the sky and the further we look, the longer we look back into the past.

The European Space Agency explained more about this new spiral galaxy image on its website.

Space scientists have revealed a mesmerising image of a stunning whirlpool galaxy.

It said: “In this image the dark red regions trace the filamentary warm dust permeating the medium of the galaxy.

“The red regions show the reprocessed light from complex molecules forming on dust grains, while colours of orange and yellow reveal the regions of ionised gas by the recently formed star clusters.

“Stellar feedback has a dramatic effect on the medium of the galaxy and create complex network of bright knots as well as cavernous black bubbles.”

Galaxies are thought to turn into spiral shapes because they rotate.

The Whirlpool galaxy is said to have particularly prominent arms because of its neighbour - the dwarf galaxy NGC 5195.

Both galaxies are thought to be in a tumultuous relationship.

They have a gravitational impact on each other which affects what they look like.

This story originally appeared on The Sun and is republished here with permission