Rosa Rubicondior: Creationism Refuted - Don't Laugh At the Bible's Authors, They Were Only Doing Their Best!

NGC 3285B

A spiral galaxy with a disc made up of several swirling arms. Patchy blue clouds of gas are speckled over the disc, where stars are forming and lighting up the gas around them. The core of the galaxy is large and shines brightly gold, while the spiral arms are a paler and faint reddish colour. Neighbouring galaxies - from small, elongated spots to larger swirling spirals - can be seen across the black background.

Swirling spiral in Hydra | ESA/Hubble

Take a grain of rice and hold it between your thumb and forefinger at arm’s length while looking up at the night sky. The patch of sky hidden behind that tiny grain of rice probably contains thousands of galaxies—each with around half a trillion stars. Some of these stars are ancient, nearing the end of their tens-of-millions-of-years lifespans; others are just beginning to form from clouds of gas and debris left behind by older stars that exploded as supernovae.

What lies behind that grain of rice is a tiny fragment of a dynamic, evolving, ever-changing, and expanding universe. A universe of which our ancient prophets were completely unaware as they crafted imaginative descriptions of its origins—descriptions written just a few thousand years ago that portrayed it as a small, unchanging cosmos, with a flat Earth at the centre covered by a dome.

But let’s not be too hard on them. As they stood in their Canaanite pastures, the Earth must indeed have looked flat and small, and the sky would have seemed like the roof of a great tent, adorned with tiny lights and with the sun and moon suspended from it. To them, the Earth appeared fixed and immobile while the dome overhead turned slowly, or perhaps invisible spirits moved the lights across the heavens each night. They didn’t know where the sun went after sunset and imagined the moon might hide in a deep valley during the day.

What information is there about the galaxy NGC 3285B? Here’s a detailed summary of what is currently known about NGC 3285B, based on the latest observations and imaging:

Summary at a Glance

Galaxy Type: Barred spiral (SBb)
Distance from Earth: ~137 million light‑years (≈ 42 Mpc)
Diameter: ~100,000 light‑years
Cluster Membership: NGC 3312 group → Hydra I cluster (Abell 1060)
Noteworthy Event: Type Ia supernova SN 2023xqm in 2023
Star Formation: Active, seen as blue gas regions along the arms

Key Facts about NGC 3285B

Nature and Location

Type: Barred spiral galaxy (classification SB(rs)b), with a well-defined central bar and multiple spiral arms [1]
Distance: Approximately 137 million light‑years from Earth (≈ 42 Mpc), based on non‑redshift distance measurements; redshift-based distance estimates lie near 49 Mpc [1]
Constellation: Located in Hydra, the largest and longest of the 88 constellations, spanning nearly 100° across the sky [2]

Galactic Environment

Cluster Membership: Part of the NGC 3312 group (also known as LGG 210), which itself lies within the Hydra I cluster (Abell 1060) [1]
Cluster Context: The Hydra I cluster is dominated by two giant elliptical galaxies about 150,000 light‑years in diameter—around 50 per cent larger than the Milky Way [2]
Location in Cluster: NGC 3285B occupies a peripheral position, relatively isolated from major galactic collisions, which helps preserve its spiral structure [3]

Appearance and Structure

Image Characteristics: Hubble’s full‑colour image was composed from ultraviolet through infrared exposures using Wide Field Camera 3, covering seven filters [4]
Morphology: The core glows a warm golden hue—dominated by older stars—while the spiral arms are paler reddish tones, interspersed with blue gas clouds indicating active star formation [1, 4]
Estimated Size: The galaxy spans around 30 kpc, which corresponds to roughly 100,000 light‑years across [1, 4]

A Supernova Event: SN 2023xqm

Discovery: A Type Ia supernova designated SN 2023xqm was observed in November 2023 at the edge of NGC 3285B’s disc; it reached an apparent magnitude of ~17.9 [1]
Importance: Type Ia supernovae serve as standard candles, and this event is part of a broader programme using data from ~100 such supernovae to improve distance measurements in cosmology (mitigating reddening effects due to interstellar dust) [4, 5],

Scientific Significance

NGC 3285B has gained attention thanks to its clarity in Hubble imaging and the occurrence of SN 2023xqm. Observing a Type Ia supernova in a relatively undisturbed spiral aids astronomers in refining the cosmic distance ladder and testing models of universal expansion. Moreover, the galaxy’s well-preserved spiral morphology offers insights into how interactions or isolation influence galactic evolution.

It wasn’t their fault they got it so profoundly wrong—we can only smile at their childlike naivety. They could not have imagined that one day their myths would be collected into a book and declared by some to be an inerrant scientific and historical account. They had no inkling of the technological marvels and scientific insights we now possess, allowing us to peer deep into space and back through time to uncover facts beyond anything they could have conceived.

The people we should be hard on are those frauds and charlatans who exploit people's ignorance and tell them the Bible is an accurate description of reality and 'proof' it is the word of an omniscient creator god - usually in return for tithes and donations to keep them in a lifestyle of which their victims can only dream.

For example, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured stunning images of spiral galaxies like NGC 3285B, located 137 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra. This means we’re seeing it as it was 137 million years ago—when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth and the first proto-mammals had yet to evolve. Such images confirm the predictions of cosmologists and theoretical physicists: the universe is not the result of divine intervention but of natural forces acting according to the laws of physics, shaped by the conditions present at the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago.

The image of this galaxy is featured as the European Space Agency’s Picture of the Week.

The swirling spiral galaxy in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week is NGC 3285B, which resides 137 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra (The Water Snake). Hydra has the largest area of the 88 constellations that cover the entire sky in a celestial patchwork. It’s also the longest constellation, stretching 100 degrees across the sky. It would take nearly 200 full Moons, placed side by side, to reach from one side of the constellation to the other.

NGC 3285B is a member of the Hydra I cluster, one of the largest galaxy clusters in the nearby Universe. Galaxy clusters are collections of hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound to one another by gravity. The Hydra I cluster is anchored by two giant elliptical galaxies at its centre. Each of these galaxies is about 150,000 light-years across, making them about 50% larger than our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

NGC 3285B sits on the outskirts of its home cluster, far from the massive galaxies at the centre. This galaxy drew Hubble’s attention because it hosted a Type Ia supernova in 2023. Type Ia supernovae happen when a type of condensed stellar core called a white dwarf detonates, igniting a sudden burst of nuclear fusion that briefly shines about 5 billion times brighter than the Sun. The supernova, named SN 2023xqm, is visible here as a blue-ish dot on the left edge of the galaxy’s disc.

Hubble observed NGC 3285B as part of an observing programme that targeted 100 Type Ia supernovae. By viewing each of these supernovae in ultraviolet, optical, and near-infrared light, researchers aim to disentangle the effects of distance and dust, both of which can make a supernova appear redder than it actually is. This programme will help refine cosmic distance measurements that rely on observations of Type Ia supernovae.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz)

A few more Pictures of the week".