Zoom into the Virgo Cluster

Spiral Galaxy Pair NGC 4302 and NGC 4298

In celebration of the 27th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on April 24, 1990, astronomers used the legendary telescope to take a portrait of a stunning pair of spiral galaxies. This starry pair offers a glimpse of what our Milky Way galaxy would look...

Infrared Image of Galaxy Pair NGC 4302 and NGC 4298

This is an infrared image of the galaxy pair NGC 4302 and NGC 4298 taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. The infrared light pierces through the dust lanes and shows significantly more stars than seen in visible light. In the infrared, the edge-on NGC 4302 is brighter than in...

A Sea of Spiral Galaxies

This is a Hubble Space Telescope view of a small, random location on the sky, awash largely with spiral galaxies like our Milky Way. This sea of galaxies stretches across billions of light-years. Most of the prominent galaxies look different only because they are tilted at...

Compass and Scale Image for NGC 4302 and NGC 4298

Perspectives on Spiral Galaxies

Spiral galaxies are pancake-shaped collections of billions of stars, along with vast clouds of gas and dust. This video illustrates how their observed shapes can differ greatly depending upon the angle at which they are observed. The spiral galaxies NGC 4302 (left) and NGC 4298...