Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic greetings card showing a stunning, mind-blowing image that reveals a little of the wonder that is our universe. This spectacular image of the large spiral galaxy NGC was obtained on September , , during a period of good observing conditions. It is based on three exposures in ultra-violet, blue and red light, respectively. The colours of the different regions are well visible : the central areas contain older stars of reddish colour, while the spiral arms are populated by young, blue stars and many star-forming regions. Note the distorted companion galaxy on the left side, shaped like the greek letter “theta”. NGC is located º south of the celestial equator, in the constellation Eridanus (The River). The distance is about million light-years, but the excellent optical quality of the VLT and FORS allows us to see an incredible wealth of details. At the indicated distance, the edge of the field shown corresponds to about , light-years, or about twice the size of the Milky Way galaxy. The image is a composite of three images taken behind three different filters: U (nm; min), B (nm; 6 min) and R (nm; 2: min) during a period of arcsec seeing. The field shown measures x arcmin. North is up; East is to the left. Image code: spgxy ESO/J. Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution Unported license.
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