Story: Night sky

A spiral galaxy

A spiral galaxy

If we could view the Milky Way galaxy from above it would look like this large spiral galaxy, NGC 4414. A central core of old red stars is surrounded by outer regions of dust lanes and young stars. This galaxy is located 60 million light years from earth in the direction of the constellation Coma Berenices. The image is from the Hubble Space Telescope.

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Hubble Space Telescope
Reference: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)

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How to cite this page:

John Field and Maggy Wassilieff, 'Night sky - Galaxies', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/photograph/7924/a-spiral-galaxy (accessed 30 March 2024)

Story by John Field and Maggy Wassilieff, published 12 Jun 2006