Warm gas clouds and stars in NGC 4303 mapped with MUSE on ESO’s VLT

This image of the nearby galaxy NGC 4303 was taken with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The bright reddish glows map warm clouds of hydrogen (Hα), marking the presence of newly born stars, while the bluish regions (a combination of green, red and infrared filters) reveal the distribution of slightly older stars. 

NGC 4303 is a spiral galaxy, with a bar of stars and gas at its centre, located approximately 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. 

The images were taken as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) project, which is making high-resolution observations of nearby galaxies with telescopes operating across the electromagnetic spectrum.