Saturday, 15 June 2019

Astronomy Picture of the Day: Spiral Galaxy M96 from Hubble

2019 June 12 
See Explanation.  Clicking on the picture will download
 the highest resolution version available.
 Dust lanes seem to swirl around the core of Messier 96 in this colorful, detailed portrait of the center of a beautiful island universe. Of course M96 is aspiral galaxy, and counting the faint arms extending beyond the brighter central region, it spans 100 thousand light-years or so, making it about the size of our ownMilky Way. M96, also known as NGC 3368, is known to be about 35 million light-years distant and a dominant member of the Leo I galaxy group. The featured image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The reason for M96's asymmetry is unclear -- it could have arisen from gravitational interactions with other Leo Igroup galaxies, but the lack of an intra-group diffuse glow seems to indicate few recent interactions. Galaxies far in the background can be found by examining the edges of the picture.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190612.html

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