Spiral galaxy NGC 3147 Jigsaw Puzzle

Spiral galaxy NGC 3147, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument is featured on this unique jigsaw puzzle. The image includes a description of the object and the instruments used to observe it. Fun Stuff: Spiral galaxy NGC 3147 appears face-on from our perspective at 130 million light-years away. How do we know that distance? One tool astronomers use are stars called Cepheid variables. These stars are called variables because their brightness fluctuates. And Cepheids are special variables because there is a relationship between their brightness and the amount of time their brightness takes to fluctuate back to its starting part. Astronomers measure that time period and “apparent” brightness as it appears from Earth’s distance and use that information to estimate the star’s real brightness. From the difference between the apparent and real brightnesses, they can estimate the star’s (and its parent galaxy’s) distance, similar to how you might guess how far your phone’s lit screen is from you across a dark room. Technical Stuff: This image is a composite of multiple observations taken by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3. This camera is actually two detectors in one, one sensitive to the infrared and one to visible/near-ultraviolet portions of the spectrum. This image was observed on both detectors and overlaid into one majestic scene. Image Credits: NASA, ESA, S. Bianchi (Università degli Studi Roma Tre University), A. Laor (Technion-Israel Institute of Technology), and M. Chiaberge (ESA, STScI, and JHU) Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2019/35/4545-Image?page=6&keyword=galaxy&filterUUID=4c394bbb-b21e-43ab-a160-2a4521d70243