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Credit & Copyright: Michael Sidonio
Explanation:
Big, bright, and beautiful,
spiral
galaxy M83
lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern
tip of the very long
constellation Hydra.
About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is
known as the Southern Pinwheel for its pronounced spiral arms.
But the wealth of
reddish star forming regions
found near the edges of the arms' thick dust lanes,
also suggest another popular moniker for M83, the
Thousand-Ruby Galaxy.
This new deep telescopic
digital image
also records the bright galaxy's faint, extended halo.
Arcing toward the bottom of the cosmic frame lies a
stellar tidal stream,
debris drawn from massive M83 by
the gravitational disruption of a smaller, merging satellite galaxy.
Astronomers David Malin and Brian Hadley
found the elusive
star stream in the mid 1990s by enhancing photographic plates.
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: spiral galaxy - M 83
Publications with words: spiral galaxy - M 83
See also: