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On Edge

NGC 5866

The disk galaxy NGC 5866 is tilted nearly edge on to our line of sight. Hubble’s sharp vision reveals a crisp dust lane dividing the galaxy into two halves. The image highlights the galaxy’s structure: a subtle, reddish bulge surrounding a bright nucleus, a blue disk of stars running parallel to the dust lane, and a transparent outer halo. The outer halo is dotted with numerous gravitationally bound globular clusters of nearly a million stars each. Background galaxies that are millions to billions of light-years farther away than NGC 5866 are also seen through the halo.

Image Credit: NASA

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Last Updated
Apr 17, 2023
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NASA Hubble Mission Team

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