Posted on 05/10/2013 4:36:33 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: Face-on spiral galaxy M77 lies a mere 47 million light-years away toward the aquatic constellation Cetus. At that estimated distance, the gorgeous island universe is about 100 thousand light-years across. Also known as NGC 1068, its compact and very bright core is well studied by astronomers exploring the mysteries of supermassive black holes in active Seyfert galaxies. M77 is also seen at x-ray, ultraviolet, infrared, and radio wavelengths. But this sharp visible light image based on Hubble data follows its winding spiral arms traced by obscuring dust clouds and red-tinted star forming regions close in to the galaxy's luminous core.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit: NASA, ESA, André van der Hoeven]
I've seen Messier objects than this.
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Its full of stars.
the big one, and hey, wow:
http://129.164.179.22/apod/image/1305/heic1305aM77_2948.jpg
What about ‘Gretzky 99’?
No kidding!
That was fantastic.
A reprise....
That’s an interesting point actually. If you’ve ever seen that “powers of ten” movie clip, that pans from the nuclear scale all the way out to the known universe, you’ll notice that there’s a big gap of nothing from the solar system scale, at 10 light-hours to the galactic scale, at 100,000 l-yrs. And then clusters of galaxies are only about 200 times as large as galaxies, at 200 million l-yrs or so, and then 100 times that is the universe, at 20 billion l-yrs.
So yeah, 47 million l-yrs is up there, even though it’s among the closest of all the visible galaxies.
LOL.
It’s actually quite “neat”.
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