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Credit & Copyright: R. Gendler,
D. Martinez-Delgado (ARI-ZAH,
Univ. Heidelberg)
D. Malin
(AAO),
NAOJ, ESO, HLA - Assembly and Processing: Robert Gendler
Explanation:
Big, bright, and beautiful,
spiral galaxy M83
lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern
tip of the very long
constellation
Hydra.
This deep
view of the gorgeous island universe
includes observations from Hubble, along with ground based data from
the European Southern Observatory's very large telescope units,
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan's Subaru telescope, and
Australian
Astronomical Observatory photographic data by D. Malin.
About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is
popularly known as the Southern Pinwheel for its pronounced spiral arms.
But the wealth of
reddish star forming regions
found near the edges of the arms' thick dust lanes,
also suggest another popular moniker for M83, the
Thousand-Ruby
Galaxy.
Arcing near the top of the novel cosmic portrait lies M83's northern
stellar tidal stream,
debris from the gravitational disruption of a smaller, merging
satellite galaxy.
The faint, elusive star stream was
found
in the mid 1990s by enhancing photographic plates.
NAOJ, ESO, HLA - Assembly and Processing: Robert Gendler
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: spiral galaxy
Publications with words: spiral galaxy
See also: