When Galaxies turn Pink!

Oh, yes, yes they do turn pink. You may be used to plain old "boring" spiral galaxies, like my buddy M74 over here.

A number of these galaxies happen to be "face-on" to us, so we can really get a good glimpse of what's going on in their individual spiral arms. Many of them, like the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101), are pretty unremarkable, and are just a dusty whitish-blue color. But if we take other, similar galaxies, like NGC 3184, we find something interesting. Specifically, we find a few areas in these spiral arms that are pink.

This is not false color, either. This is plain-old visible light. And despite what you may think, this is not unusual. Pink shows up in all sorts of galaxies, such as M83 and NGC 6946. But I'd like to show you perhaps the most famous face-on spiral galaxy -- the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) -- for a spectacular example of a pink-hued galaxy.
inwheel_Galaxy">Pinwheel Galaxy (M101), are pretty unremarkable, and are just a dusty whitish-blue color. But if we take other, similar galaxies, like NGC 3184, we find something interesting. Specifically, we find a few areas in these spiral arms that are pink