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Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh
Explanation:
Beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744
is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than
our own Milky Way.
It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern
constellation Pavo and appears as only a faint, extended object in
small telescopes.
We see the disk of the nearby island universe tilted towards our
line of sight.
This
remarkably detailed galaxy portrait covers an area about
the angular size of the full moon.
In it, the giant galaxy's elongated yellowish core is dominated by
the light from old, cool stars.
Beyond the core, grand spiral arms are filled with
young blue star clusters and speckled with pinkish star forming regions.
An extended arm sweeps past a smaller satellite galaxy at the upper left.
NGC 6744's galactic companion is reminiscent of the Milky Way's
satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud.
This Weekend:
Meteor Showers Expected,
Moon bites Sun
(again)
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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: spiral galaxy
Publications with words: spiral galaxy
See also: