Todays pic is another case of being posted just for sheer beauty, another galaxy and just as good as the last one IMHO.
Spiral Galaxy In Centaurus
Centaurus, the Centaur, is one of the most striking constellations in the southern sky. The lovely Milky Way flows through this large constellation whose celestial wonders also include the closest star to the sun, Alpha Centauri, the largest globular star cluster in our galaxy, Omega Centauri, and the closest active galaxy, Centaurus A. Embraced by tightly wound spiral arms of bright blue star clusters, this gorgeous galaxy - catalogued as ESO 269-57 - also falls within Centaurus' borders. Seen behind a veil of foreground stars which lie within our own galaxy, this face-on spiral galaxy is about 150 million light-years away and 200,000 light-years across. The brighter foreground stars are marked by diffraction spikes caused by the telescope and yellow vertical stripes due to saturated digital camera pixels in the above Very Large Telescope image from the European Southern Observatory. Tantalising wisps of more distant, faint galaxies are visible in the background.
Credit: FORS1, VLT, ESO
A higher resolution version of this pic can be found here, this is a 672K Jpeg image.
Previous Pic Of The Day posts
18th Apr 03
16th Apr 03
14th Apr 03
12th Apr 03
11th Apr 03
09th Apr 03
08th Apr 03
Spiral Galaxy In Centaurus
Centaurus, the Centaur, is one of the most striking constellations in the southern sky. The lovely Milky Way flows through this large constellation whose celestial wonders also include the closest star to the sun, Alpha Centauri, the largest globular star cluster in our galaxy, Omega Centauri, and the closest active galaxy, Centaurus A. Embraced by tightly wound spiral arms of bright blue star clusters, this gorgeous galaxy - catalogued as ESO 269-57 - also falls within Centaurus' borders. Seen behind a veil of foreground stars which lie within our own galaxy, this face-on spiral galaxy is about 150 million light-years away and 200,000 light-years across. The brighter foreground stars are marked by diffraction spikes caused by the telescope and yellow vertical stripes due to saturated digital camera pixels in the above Very Large Telescope image from the European Southern Observatory. Tantalising wisps of more distant, faint galaxies are visible in the background.
Credit: FORS1, VLT, ESO
A higher resolution version of this pic can be found here, this is a 672K Jpeg image.
Previous Pic Of The Day posts
18th Apr 03
16th Apr 03
14th Apr 03
12th Apr 03
11th Apr 03
09th Apr 03
08th Apr 03
