GALAXIES
| M83 | The face-on spiral galaxy M 83. |
| NGC1232 | The face-on spiral galaxy NGC 1232. |
| NGC2997 | The face-on spiral galaxy NGC 2997. |
| NGC4603 | The face-on spiral galaxy NGC 4603 is 108 million light years away. |
| NGC4622 | The face-on spiral galaxy NGC 4622. |
| NGC1365(1) | The face-on barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 imaged from Earth's surface. |
| NGC1365(2) | The face-on barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 imaged by the Hubble Telescope. NGC 1365 is about 60 million light years away. |
| M51 | The face-on spiral galaxy M51 imaged by the Hubble Telescope. M51 is 23 million light years away. |
| M31 | The Andromeda Galaxy. |
| M33 | The face-on spiral galaxy in the constellation Triangulum. |
| NGC253(1) | The tilted spiral galaxy NGC 253. |
| NGC253(2) | An enlarged portion of the tilted galaxy NGC 253 imaged by the Hubble Telescope. |
| M64 | Beautiful Hubble Telescope picture of galaxy M64, 17 million light years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. |
| NGC3370 | Tilted spiral galaxy NGC 3370 is 98 million light years away in the constellation Leo. |
| NGC4013 | The edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 4013. (Look for other small galaxies in the image!) |
| M104 | The edge-on galaxy M104, the Sombrero Galaxy. |
| M104(2) | An enlarged image of the edge-on galaxy M104. |
| NGC4565 | Edge-on galaxy 4565 is about 30 million light years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. The galaxy is about 100,000 LY in diameter. |
| MilkyWay(1) | Our own Milky Way Galaxy seen edge-on from within! |
| MilkyWay(2) | The Milky Way with constellations outlined. |
| MilkyWay(3) | Images showing the size of the Milky Way and the Sun's location in the Milky Way. |
| MilkyWay(4) | Looking closely at the center of the Milky Way. |
| MilkyWay(5) | The Milky Way photographed from the Mauna Kea Visitor Center on May 27, 2001. Mars is the bright object above the Sagittarius teapot. In the foreground is an "ahu hoku" , a star marker altar consisting of rocks topped with a piece of white coral which glows in moonlight. |
| ESO510G13 | The edge-on galaxy ESO-5410-G13 is 150 million light years away in the constellation Hydra. It features a warped disk caused by gravitational interaction with a nearby galaxy. |
| Centaurus A | The Galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128) is located 13 million light years away in the constellation Centaurus. It features a prominent dust lane across its center. |
| NGC4650A | The irregular galaxy NGC 4650A is about 130 million light years away. The peculiar shape might possibly be due to a collision between two galaxies in the distant past. |
| NGC6872 | A galaxy's shape can be distorted through gravitational interaction with another nearby galaxy. |
| NGC4038(1) | A pair of colliding "Antennae" galaxies about 63 million light years away in the constellation Corvus. The long tails are caused by the gravitational interaction between the two galaxies which disrupts their shapes. |
| NGC4038(2) | A Hubble Telescope image of the colliding galaxies. The sweeping spiral-like patterns, traced by bright blue star clusters, shows the result of a firestorm of star birth activity which was triggered by the collision. |
| NGC 4038(3) | A magnified portion of the galaxy collision showing the bright blue regions of enhanced star formation. |
| NGC1409 | This visible-light picture, taken by NASA's
Hubble Space Telescope, reveals an intergalactic "pipeline" of
material flowing between two battered galaxies that bumped into each other
about 100 million years ago. The pipeline [the dark string of matter]
begins in NGC 1410 [the galaxy at left], crosses over 20,000 light-years
of intergalactic space, and wraps around NGC 1409 [the companion galaxy at
right] like a ribbon around a package. Although astronomers have taken
many stunning pictures of galaxies slamming into each other, this image
represents the clearest view of how some interacting galaxies dump
material onto their companions.
The pipeline, a pencil-thin, 500 light-year-wide string of material, is moving a mere 0.02 solar masses of matter a year. Astronomers estimate that NGC 1409 has consumed only about a million solar masses of gas and dust, which is not enough material to spawn some of the star-forming regions seen in our Milky Way. The low amount means that there may not be enough material to ignite star birth in NGC 1409, either. The glancing blow between the galaxies was enough, however, to toss stars deep into space and ignite a rash of star birth in NGC 1410. The arms of NGC 1410, an active, gas-rich spiral galaxy classified as a Seyfert, are awash in blue, the signature color of star-forming regions. The bar of material bisecting the center of NGC 1409 also is a typical byproduct of galaxy collisions. The galaxies' centers are only 23,000 light-years apart, which is slightly less than Earth's distance from the center of the Milky Way. They are bound together by gravity, orbiting each other at 670,000 miles an hour (1 million kilometers an hour). The galaxies reside about 300 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus. |
| Arp188 | Arp 188 is a disrupted galaxy 420 million light years away in the constellation Draco. The long drawn out tail caused by an encounter with another galaxy is 280,000 LY long. |
| M81-M82 | Galaxies M81 and M82 are about 8 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. They can be seen together in the same field of view if your telescope can provide a wide enough field of view. Check out this neat zoom-in to the center of M82! |
| Galaxy Groups | Beautiful pictures of groups of galaxies. |
| NGC 3314 | The galaxy pair NGC 3314 is a chance alignment of a face-on
spiral galaxy in front of another larger spiral. This line-up provides a rare chance to
visualize dark material within the front galaxy, seen only because it is silhouetted
against the object behind it. Dust lying in the spiral arms of the foreground galaxy
stands out where it absorbs light from the more distant galaxy. This silhouetting shows us
where the interstellar dust clouds are located, and how much light they absorb. The outer
spiral arms of the front galaxy appear to change from bright to dark, as they are
projected first against deep space, and then against the bright background of the other
galaxy. |
| NGC 6822 | A new color image of the nearby irregular galaxy NGC6822 shows a myriad of hot blue massive stars and several famous nebulae in impressive detail.
NGC6822 is located approximately 1.6 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Sagittarius. A member of the Milky Way galaxy's Local Group, it was discovered by E.E. Barnard in the early 1880s. Edwin P. Hubble conducted the first detailed investigation of the galaxy in 1925, using the new 100-inch telescope on Mount
Wilson. An analysis of these plates by then-graduate student Susan E. Kayser in 1966 has remained the most complete study of this galaxy until now. New images of NGC6822 in eight filters were taken using the National Science Foundation's Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) near La Serena, Chile, by CTIO staff members Knut Olsen and Chris Smith. |
| UGC 10214 | This picture of the galaxy UGC 10214 was taken on April 1 and 9,
2002 by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Dubbed the "Tadpole," this spiral galaxy is unlike the textbook images of stately galaxies.
Its distorted shape was caused by a small interloper, a very blue, compact galaxy visible in the upper left corner of the more massive
Tadpole. The Tadpole resides about 420 million light-years away in the constellation Draco.
Seen shining through the Tadpole's disk, the tiny intruder is likely a hit-and-run galaxy that is now leaving the scene of the accident. Strong
gravitational forces from the interaction created the long tail of debris, consisting of stars and gas that stretch out more than 280,000
light-years. Numerous young blue stars and star clusters, spawned by the galaxy collision, are seen in the spiral arms, as well as in the long "tidal" tail of stars. Each of these clusters represents the formation of up to about a million stars. Their color is blue because they contain very massive stars, which are 10 times hotter and 1 million times brighter than our Sun. Once formed, the star clusters become redder with age as the most massive and bluest stars exhaust their fuel and burn out. These clusters will eventually become old globular clusters similar to those found in essentially all halos of galaxies, including our own Milky Way. Two prominent clumps of young bright blue stars in the long tail are separated by a "gap" -- a section that is fainter than the rest of the tail. These clumps of stars will likely become dwarf galaxies that orbit in the Tadpole's halo. The galactic carnage and torrent of star birth are playing out against a spectacular backdrop: a "wallpaper pattern" of 6,000 galaxies. These galaxies represent twice the number of those discovered in the legendary Hubble Deep Field, the orbiting observatory's "deepest" view of the heavens, taken in 1995 by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The ACS picture, however, was taken in one-twelfth the time it took to observe the original Hubble Deep Field. In blue light, ACS sees even fainter objects than were seen in the "deep field." The galaxies in the ACS picture, like those in the deep field, stretch back to nearly the beginning of time. They are a myriad of shapes and represent fossil samples of the universe's 13-billion-year evolution. |
| NGC 4676 | Located 300 million light-years away in the constellation Coma
Berenices, the colliding galaxies have been nicknamed "The Mice" because of the long tails of stars and gas emanating from each galaxy. Otherwise
known as NGC 4676, the pair will eventually merge into a single giant galaxy. The image shows the most detail and the most stars that have ever been seen in these galaxies. In the galaxy at left, the bright blue patch is resolved into a vigorous cascade of clusters and associations of young, hot blue stars, whose formation has been triggered by the tidal forces of the gravitational interaction. Streams of material can also be seen flowing between the two galaxies. The clumps of young stars in the long, straight tidal tail [upper right] are separated by fainter regions of material. These dim regions suggest that the clumps of stars have formed from the gravitational collapse of the gas and dust that once occupied those areas. Some of the clumps have luminous masses comparable to dwarf galaxies that orbit in the halo of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Here's a movie showing a simulation of the galaxy collision. The Mice presage what may happen to our own Milky Way several billion years from now when it collides with our nearest large neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). This Hubble Telescope picture is assembled from three sets of images taken on April 7, 2002, in blue, orange, and near-infrared filters. |
| Hoag's Galaxy | This strange face-on ring galaxy is known as Hoag's Object. It is about 120,000 LY in diameter, and about 600 million LY away in the constellation Serpens. |
| AMO644-741 | This ring galaxy, imaged by the Hubble Telescope is 300 million LY away. The ring is 150,000 LY in diameter and contains newly formed bright stars. |
| NGC 1309 | A wonderful Hubble Telescope image of spiral galaxy NGC 1309, about 100 million LY away in the constellation Eridanus. Many more distant galaxies are visible in the image. |
| M 101 | Spiral galaxy M 101 in Ursa Major is about 25 million LY away and 170,000 LY across. Hubble Telescope images. |
| NGC 1300 | A barred spiral 69 million LY away in the constellation Eridanus. Hubble Telescope image. |