Time Is Long, Space is Empty

Hockey Stick Galaxy NGC 4656

Giant elliptical galaxy M60 and spiral galaxy NGC 4647 do look like an odd couple in this sharp cosmic portrait from the Hubble Space Telescope. But they are found in a region of space where galaxies tend to gather, on the eastern side of the nearby Virgo Galaxy Cluster. About 54 million light-years distant, bright M60’s simpler egg-like shape is created by its randomly swarming older stars, while NGC 4647’s young blue stars, gas and dust are organized into winding arms rotating in a flattened disk. Spiral NGC 4647 is estimated to be more distant than M60, some 63 million light-years away. Also known as Arp 116, the pair of galaxies may be on the verge of a significant gravitational encounter, though. M60 (aka NGC 4649) is about 120,000 light-years across. The smaller NGC 4647 spans around 90,000 light-years, about the size of our own Milky Way.

credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA

Via Flickr: Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1672. HST ACS/WFC. NASA, ESA, & The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300 Credit: Hubble Heritage Team, ESA, NASA

Credit for NOAO Image: G. Jacoby, B. Bohannan, M. Hanna/ NOAO/AURA/NSF

Horsehead Rides Again

RS Puppis: a Cepheid type variable star, a class of stars whose brightness is used to estimate distances to nearby galaxies. It is surrounded by a reflection nebula, and is 10x more massive than the Sun.