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Credit & Copyright: W. Keel and R. White,
(U. Alabama, Tuscaloosa),
Hubble Heritage Team
(STScI/
AURA),
NASA
Explanation:
Can this be a spiral galaxy?
In fact,
NGC 3314 consists of two large spiral
galaxies which just happen to almost exactly line-up.
The foreground spiral is viewed nearly face-on, its
pinwheel shape defined by young bright star clusters.
But against the glow of the background galaxy, dark swirling lanes of
interstellar dust are
also seen to echo the face-on spiral's structure.
The dust lanes are
surprisingly pervasive, and this remarkable
pair of
overlapping galaxies is one of a small number of systems in which
absorption of visible light can be used to directly explore the
distribution
of dust in distant spirals.
NGC 3314 is about 140 million light-years away in the southern
constellation of Hydra.
Just released, this color
composite was constructed
from Hubble Space Telescope images made in 1999 and 2000.
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A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
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Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: dust - NGC 3314 - galaxy pair - spiral galaxy
Publications with words: dust - NGC 3314 - galaxy pair - spiral galaxy
See also: