Hubble Captures a Galaxy Face-On
This glittering image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the spiral galaxy IC 5332. The galaxy lies about 30 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor and has an almost face-on orientation to Earth. To understand the term ‘face-on,’ it is helpful to visualize a spiral galaxy as an extremely large disk. If the galaxy’s orientation makes it appear circular and disk-shaped from our perspective on Earth, then we say that it is ‘face-on.’ In contrast, if the galaxy’s orientation is such that it appears squashed and oval-shaped, then we say that it is ‘edge-on.’ The key thing is that the same galaxy would look extremely different from our perspective depending on whether it was face-on or edge-on as seen from Earth.
