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A top-down view of a spiral galaxy, showing its brightly-shining center, its broad spiral arms, and the faint halo around its disk, as well as distant galaxies and stars on a dark background. Large blue clouds of gas speckled with small stars and strands of dark dust swirl around the galaxy’s disk. A couple of the background galaxies are large enough that their own swirling spiral arms are visible.

Pinwheel-Shaped Galaxy NGC 1309

Stunning details of the face-on spiral galaxy NGC 1309 are captured in this image. Bright blue areas of star formation pepper the spiral arms, while ruddy dust lanes follow the spiral structure into a yellowish central nucleus of older stars. The image is complemented by myriad far-off background galaxies. NGC 1309 is found in the constellation Eridanus and is approximately 100 million light-years distant. It was home to supernova SN 2002fk, whose light reached Earth in September 2002. Nearby Type Ia supernovas like SN 2002fk are used by astronomers to calibrate distance measurements in the universe.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), and A. Riess (STScI)
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Image CreditNASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), and A. Riess (STScI)
Size3072x2865px