Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is
nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own
Milky Way.
It lies some 30 million
light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo. We see the disk of the
nearby island universe tilted towards our line of sight. Orientation and
composition give a strong sense of depth to this colorful galaxy portrait that covers an
area about the angular size of the
full moon.
This giant galaxy's
yellowish core is dominated by the light from old, cool stars. Beyond the core,
spiral arms filled with young blue star clusters and pinkish star forming
regions sweep past a smaller satellite galaxy at the lower left, reminiscent of
the Milky Way's satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic
Cloud.
