Interacting Galaxies
10.07.1998

This dramatic image of an interacting pair of galaxies was made using the 1.5 meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory near La Serena, Chile. NGC 1531 is the background galaxy with a bright core just above center and NGC 1532 is the foreground spiral galaxy laced with dust lanes.

APOD: 2023 July 12 Б Rings and Bar of Spiral Galaxy NGC 1398
12.07.2023

Why do some spiral galaxies have a ring around the center? Spiral galaxy NGC 1398 not only has a ring of pearly stars, gas and dust around its center, but a bar of stars and gas across its center, and spiral arms that appear like ribbons farther out.

M106: A Spiral Galaxy with a Strange Center
15.02.2015

What's happening at the center of spiral galaxy M106? A swirling disk of stars and gas, M106's appearance is dominated by blue spiral arms and red dust lanes near the nucleus, as shown in the featured image.

Bright Galaxy M81
20.06.2002

Big and beautiful spiral galaxy M81, in the northern constellation Ursa Major, is one of the brightest galaxies visible in the skies of planet Earth. This superbly detailed view reveals its bright nucleus, grand spiral arms and sweeping cosmic dust lanes with a scale comparable to the Milky Way.

Messier 65
1.06.2007

M65 is a big, beautiful spiral galaxy, the sixty-fifth object in the famous astronomical catalog compiled by 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier. It's also a member of a picturesque trio of large spiral galaxies known as the Leo Triplet, about 35 million light-years away.

IC 2574: Coddington's Nebula
6.02.2025

Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small, irregular galaxies form stars too. In fact dwarf galaxy IC 2574 shows clear evidence of intense star forming activity in its telltale reddish regions of glowing hydrogen gas.

NGC 1309 and Friends
9.02.2006

A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation Eridanus. NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy.

Hydrogen in M33
23.11.2006

Gorgeous spiral galaxy M33 seems to have more than its fair share of hydrogen. Its inner 30,000 light-years are shown here in an image processed to fully reveal the reddish glow of ionized hydrogen regions (HII regions) sprawling along loose spiral arms as they wind toward the galaxy's core.

Southwest Andromeda
17.09.2001

This new image composite of the southwest region of M31 from the Subaru Telescope shows many stars, nebulae, and star clusters never before resolved. An older population of stars near Andromeda's center causes the yellow hue visible on the upper right. Young blue stars stand out in the spiral arms on the lower left.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744
26.05.2017

Big, 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 appearing as a faint, extended object in small telescopes. We see the disk of the nearby island universe tilted towards our line of sight.