M64: The Evil Eye Galaxy
Explanation:
Who knows what
evil lurks in the eyes of galaxies?
The Hubble knows -- or in the case of
spiral galaxy M64 --
is helping to find out.
Messier 64,
also known as the Evil Eye or Sleeping Beauty Galaxy,
may seem to have evil in its eye because
all of its
stars rotate
in the same direction as the
interstellar gas in the galaxy's central region,
but in the opposite direction in the outer regions.
Captured here
in great detail by the Earth-orbiting
Hubble Space Telescope,
enormous dust clouds obscure the near-side of
M64's central region,
which are laced with the telltale reddish glow of hydrogen associated with
star formation.
M64
lies about 17 million
light years away,
meaning that the light we see from it today left when the
last common ancestor between
humans and
chimpanzees
roamed the Earth.
The dusty eye and
bizarre rotation
are likely the result of a billion-year-old
merger of two different galaxies.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
