Daily Telescope: The ambiguously galactic duo

Expanding / This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 3783, a bright barred spiral galaxy about 130 million light-years from Earth.

ESA/Hubble & NASA, MC Benz, DJV Rosario

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There’s a little too much darkness and not enough light in this world, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We will provide daily horoscopes in other publications. At Ars Technica, we take a different route, drawing inspiration from hyper-realistic images of a universe full of stars and wonders.

good morning. April 23rd, today’s photo is from the Hubble Space Telescope. It features a beautiful barred spiral galaxy and a photobomb-like star on the right side of the image.

This galaxy is NGC 3783 and is located 130 million light-years from Earth. All astronomical distances are mind-boggling, but to put things into perspective, this galaxy is about the same distance from us compared to the diameter of our own Milky Way. That means 1,000 times further away. So it’s far, far away.

This star, HD 101274, is even closer. It is about 1,530 light-years from Earth, well within our galaxy. If you look around the edges of the bright galaxy in the center of the image, you’ll see many other spherical and oddly shaped galaxies going about their business as they orbit around the universe. Whatever it is.

sauce: ESA/Hubble & NASA, MC Benz, DJV Rosario

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Daily Telescope: The ambiguously galactic duo

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