Astronomy Tuesday

I'm in the mood for a galaxy, so here's NGC 5643 as seen by the Hubble.

I always love the way the blue stars show up so beautifully in a galaxy image like this, but magnificent as they are, it's the small, common yellow stars like our sun that provide an environment where life can flourish. They won't show up in an image like this, their light overwhelmed by that of the supergiants, but they're there, millions of them, each chugging along for the billions of years necessary to form planets capable of creating and sustaining life. Meanwhile the blue giants burn hot and die fast, their only legacy to the universe the heavy elements they create when they explode in a supernova.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, A. Riess et al.; Acknowledgement: Mahdi Zamani