A little miscommunication from the astronomy geeks

Can you spot the problem?

The caption for this picture of a beautiful nearby galaxy, Starburst M94, reads:

Beautiful island universe Messier 94 lies a mere 15 million light-years distant in the northern constellation of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici). A popular target for Earth-based astronomers, the face-on spiral galaxy is about 30,000 light-years across, with spiral arms sweeping through the outskirts of its broad disk. But this Hubble Space Telescope field of view spans about 7,000 light-years across M94’s central region. The featured close-up highlights the galaxy’s compact, bright nucleus, prominent inner dust lanes, and the remarkable bluish ring of young massive stars. The ring stars are all likely less than 10 million years old, indicating that M94 is a starburst galaxy that is experiencing an epoch of rapid star formation from inspiraling gas.

“The ring stars are all likely less than 10 million years old”

WERE, not ARE.

If they ARE ten million years old we would not be able to see them at all!

The author is trying to say that our current view of them shows what they looked like way back when they were less than ten million years old.

But that was 15 million years ago!

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