spiral galaxies
The dusty disc of NGC 247
The spiral galaxy NGC 247 is one of the closest spiral galaxies of the southern sky. In this new view from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope in Chile large numbers of the galaxy’s component stars are clearly resolved and…
Gas rich galaxies confirm prediction of modified gravity theory
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Recent data for gas rich galaxies precisely match predictions of a modified theory of gravity know as MOND according to a new analysis by University of Maryland Astronomy Professor Stacy McGaugh. This — the latest of severa…
Astronomers identify thick disc of older stars in nearby Andromeda galaxy
An international team of astronomers has identified for the first time a thick stellar disc in the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way.
The discovery of the thick disc, a major result from a five-year investiga…
A picture-perfect pure-disc galaxy
NGC 3621 is a spiral galaxy about 22 million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra (The Sea Snake). It is comparatively bright and can be seen well in moderate-sized telescopes. This picture was taken using the Wide Field Imager on th…
Spiral galaxies stripped bare
HAWK-I [1] is one of the newest and most powerful cameras on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). It is sensitive to infrared light, which means that much of the obscuring dust in the galaxies’ spiral arms becomes transparent to its detectors. Co…
A nearby galactic exemplar
Originally discovered from Australia by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop early in the nineteenth century, NGC 300 is one of the closest and most prominent spiral galaxies in the southern skies and is bright enough to be seen easily in bino…
Astronomers Detect a Faint Debris Trail in the Andromeda Galaxy
The discovery of a faint trail of stars in the nearby Andromeda galaxy offers new evidence that large spiral galaxies have grown by gobbling up smaller satellite galaxies. Andromeda (also known as M31) is the nearest large galaxy to our own Milky Way and is very similar to it in appearance. Studying Andromeda gives astronomers an external perspective on a galaxy much like our own–it’s like looking at a bigger sibling of our galaxy.