Face-On Spiral IC 5332

This glittering image shows the spiral galaxy IC 5332, which lies about 30 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor, and has an almost face-on orientation to Earth. To explain what is meant by "face-on", it is helpful to visualize a spiral galaxy as an (extremely) large disc. If the galaxy is oriented so that it appears circular and disc-shaped from our perspective here on Earth, then we can say that it is ‘face-on’. In contrast, if it is oriented so that it appears squashed and oval-shaped, then we would say that it is ‘edge-on’. The key thing is that the same galaxy would look extremely different from our perspective depending on whether it was face-on or edge-on as seen from Earth.