NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Collection

Spiral Galaxy In Centaurus

Centaurus [ http://www.astro.wi…constellations/Centa urus.html ], the Centaur, is one of the most striking constellations [ http://www.astro.wi…Centaurus.html ] in the southern sky. The lovely Milky Way [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] flows through this large constellation whose celestial wonders also include the closest star to the sun, Alpha Centauri [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…], the largest globular star cluster in our galaxy, Omega Centauri [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…], and the closest active galaxy, Centaurus A [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…]. Embraced by tightly wound spiral arms of bright blue star clusters, this gorgeous galaxy - cataloged as ESO 269-57 - also falls within Centaurus' borders [ http://www.e-z.net/…]. Seen behind a veil of foreground stars which lie within our own galaxy, this face-on spiral galaxy [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] is about 150 million light-years away and 200,000 light-years across. The brighter foreground stars are marked by diffraction spikes [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] caused by the telescope and yellow vertical stripes due to saturated digital camera pixels in the above Very Large Telescope image [ http://www.eso.org/…] from the European Southern Observatory. Tantalizing wisps of more distant, faint galaxies are visible in the background.

FORS1 [ http://www.eso.org/…], VLT [ http://www.eso.org/…], ESO [ http://www.eso.org/]

Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

ESO

Sun

Centaurus

VLT

Centaur

Very Large Telescope

spiral galaxy

http://antwrp.gsfc.…

SPD-APOD-ap030419