esahubble_potw1820a May 14th, 2018
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Resembling a wizards staff set aglow, NGC 1032 cleaves the quiet darkness of space in two in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 1032 is located about a hundred million light years away in the constellation Cetus (The Sea Monster). Although beautiful, this image perhaps does not do justice to the galaxys true aesthetic appeal: NGC 1032 is actually a spectacular spiral galaxy, but from Earth, the galaxys vast disc of gas, dust and stars is seen nearly edge-on. A handful of other galaxies can be seen lurking in the background, scattered around the narrow stripe of NGC 1032. Many are oriented face-on or at tilted angles, showing off their glamorous spiral arms and bright cores. Such orientations provide a wealth of detail about the arms and their nuclei, but fully understanding a galaxys three-dimensional structure also requires an edge-on view. This gives astronomers an overall idea of how stars are distributed throughout the galaxy and allows them to measure the height of the disc and the bright star-studded core.
Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA
Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1820a/
Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
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