Messier 66 Close Up

Messier 66 Close Up

Image Credit:

NASA,
ESA,
Hubble Heritage
(STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration.

Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin and Robert Gendler

Explanation:

Big, beautiful
spiral
galaxy Messier 66
lies a mere 35 million light-years away.

The
gorgeous island universe
is about 100 thousand light-years across, similar in size to the Milky Way.

This
Hubble Space Telescope
close-up view spans a region about 30,000
light-years wide around the galactic core.

It shows the galaxy’s disk dramatically inclined to our line-of-sight.

Surrounding its bright core, the likely home of a supermassive black
hole, obscuring dust lanes and young, blue star clusters sweep
along spiral arms
dotted with the tell-tale glow of pinkish star forming regions.

Messier 66, also known as NGC 3627, is the brightest of the three
galaxies in the gravitationally interacting
Leo Triplet.