Posted on 09/22/2015 3:16:30 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: Dust lanes seem to swirl around the core of Messier 96 in this colorful, detailed portrait of the center of a beautiful island universe. Of course M96 is a spiral galaxy, and counting the faint arms extending beyond the brighter central region, it spans 100 thousand light-years or so, making it about the size of our own Milky Way. M96, also known as NGC 3368, is known to be about 35 million light-years distant and a dominant member of the Leo I galaxy group. The featured image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The reason for M96's asymmetry is unclear -- it could have arisen from gravitational interactions with other Leo I group galaxies, but the lack of an intra-group diffuse glow seems to indicate few recent interactions. Galaxies far in the background can be found by examining the edges of the picture.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA and the LEGUS Team; Acknowledgement: R. Gendler]
When it comes to infinite particles, size does not matter any more or less than it does.
What a wondrous place the universe is!
(That's a special treat I give myself from time to time...)
As usual, I grabbed a few specially impressive images to "fuel" my screensaver (that almost always gets "OOOH!s" and "AAAH!s" from my audiences when I let my Mac rest for a bit while I answer questions... '-)
So many of these galaxies come with the description of being about 100,000 light years across and about the size of our galaxy. Is this the “default” size of spiral galaxies? How about an APOD of a real “super galaxy?”
If there was a great barrier to the radiation, I would love to see the view from a planet in the denser parts of the galaxy.
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