ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. C. Bentz, D. J. V. Rosario
Good morning. It’s April 23, and today’s photo comes from the Hubble Space Telescope. It features a lovely, barred spiral galaxy and a photobombing star on the right-hand side of the image.
The galaxy is NGC 3783, which can be found 130 million light years away from Earth. Astronomical distances are all mind-boggling, but to try and put things into perspective, that means this galaxy is about 1,000 times the distance further from us compared to the diameter of our own Milky Way Galaxy. So it’s far, far away.
The star, HD 101274, is much closer. It is located about 1,530 light years from Earth, which is well within our own galaxy. If you look around the edges of the bright galaxy in the middle of the image, you can see many other spherical and oddball shaped galaxies that are out there, whizzing around the cosmos doing their thing. Whatever that is.
Source: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. C. Bentz, D. J. V. Rosario
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