Messier 101

This image provided by NASA Tuesday Feb. 10, 2009 shows the spiral galaxy Messier 101 and is a composite of views from the Spitzer Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory. The red color shows Spitzer’s view in infrared light. It highlights the heat emitted by dust lanes in the galaxy where stars can form. The yellow color is Hubble’s view in visible light. Most of this light comes from stars, and they trace the same spiral structure as the dust lanes. The blue color shows Chandra’s view in X-ray light. Such composite images allow astronomers to see how features seen in one wavelength match up with those seen in another wavelength. (AP Photo/NASA)