Galaxies in space the size of the Milky Way head for a collision

Galaxies in space the size of the Milky Way head for a collision

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA, ESA; Processing: Judy Schmidt] What will survive this battle of the galaxies? Known as Seyfert’s Sextet, this intriguing group …. actually contains only four interacting galaxies. Near the center of this Hubble Space Telescope picture, the small face-on spiral galaxy lies in the distant background […]

Hubble provides closeup of 100,000 stars in M15 near our galaxy’s center

Hubble provides closeup of 100,000 stars in M15 near our galaxy’s center

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Hubble, NASA] Stars, like bees, swarm around the center of bright globular cluster M15. This ball of over 100,000 stars is a relic from the early years of our Galaxy, and continues to orbit the Milky Way’s center. M15, one of about 170 globular clusters remaining, is noted for […]

Dwarf galaxies: 200 million stars jammed 25 times closer together than in our Milky Way

Dwarf galaxies: 200 million stars jammed 25 times closer together than in our Milky Way

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] The bright core and outer reaches of giant elliptical galaxy M60 (NGC 4649) loom large at the upper left of this sharp close-up from the Hubble Space Telescope. Some 54 million light-years away and 120,000 light-years across, M60 is one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster. […]

Hubble’s view of a few thousand of the Abell 1689 galaxy cluster

Hubble’s view of a few thousand of the Abell 1689 galaxy cluster

A new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows an enormous collection of galaxies and star clusters in stunning detail. Hubble spied 10,000 or so of the estimated 160,000 globular star groupings thought to reside in the huge galaxy cluster Abell 1689, which lies about 2.25 billion light-years away from Earth. For comparison, our own […]

Andromeda on the rocks

Andromeda on the rocks

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION]   The Andromeda Galaxy 2.5 million light years away is the most distant object easily seen by the unaided eye. Other apparent denizens of the night sky, stars, clusters, and nebulae, typically range from a few hundred to a few thousand light-years away and lie well within our own […]

Astrophotography winner: Two interacting galaxy groups

Astrophotography winner: Two interacting galaxy groups

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION]: Martin Pugh (Heaven’s Mirror Observatory) A careful look at this colorful cosmic snapshot reveals a surprising number of galaxies both near and far toward the constellation Ursa Major. The most striking is NGC 3718, the warped spiral galaxy near picture center. NGC 3718’s spiral arms look twisted and extended, […]

Sombrero Galaxy’s bulge packed with clusters of star clusters

Sombrero Galaxy’s bulge packed with clusters of star clusters

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION]  Caltech / Palomar Observatory / Paul Gardner, Salvatore Grasso, and Ryan Hannahoe Named the Sombrero Galaxy for its hat-like resemblance, M104 features a prominent dust lane and a bright halo of stars and globular clusters. Reasons for the Sombrero’s hat-like appearance include an unusually large and extended central bulge […]

Remarkable symmetry at center of 120,000 light-year-diameter Messier 109

Remarkable symmetry at center of 120,000 light-year-diameter Messier 109

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION]  / Bob Franke Beautiful barred spiral galaxy M109, 109th entry in Charles Messier’s famous catalog of bright Nebulae and Star Clusters, is found just below the Big Dipper’s bowl in the northern constellation Ursa Major. In telescopic views, its striking central bar gives the galaxy the appearance of the […]

Galaxies interacting gravitationally

Galaxies interacting gravitationally

[Click on image for high resolution.] Credit: Adam Block, Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, University of Arizona Bright spiral galaxy NGC 3169 appears to be unraveling in this cosmic scene, played out some 70 million light-years away just below bright star Regulus toward the faint constellation Sextans. Its beautiful spiral arms are distorted into sweeping tidal tails […]