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Birthday · June 11, 2020

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300

June 11, 2020

The constellations may be old, but the person celebrating beneath them is gloriously new by cosmic standards.

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300

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APOD published June 11, 2020. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.

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Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300

Original APOD · June 11, 2020

Big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus. This Hubble Space Telescope composite view of the gorgeous island universe is one of the largest Hubble images ever made of a complete galaxy. NGC 1300 spans over 100,000 light-years and the Hubble image reveals striking details of the galaxy's dominant central bar and majestic spiral arms. In fact, on close inspection the nucleus of this classic barred spiral itself shows a remarkable region of spiral structure about 3,000 light-years across. Like other spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, NGC 1300 is thought to have a supermassive central black hole.

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