Explanation: Spiral arms seem to swirl around the core of Messier 96 in this colorful, detailed portrait of a beautiful island universe. Of course M96 is a spiral galaxy, and counting the faint arms extending beyond the brighter central region it spans 100 thousand light-years or so. That's about the size of our own Milky Way. M96 is known to be 38 million light-years distant, a dominant member of the Leo I galaxy group. Background galaxies and smaller Leo I group members can be found by examining the picture. The most intriguing one is itself a spiral galaxy seen nearly edge on behind the outer spiral arm near the 1 o'clock position from center. Its bright central bulge cut by its own dark dust clouds, the edge-on background spiral appears to be about 1/5 the size of M96. If that background galaxy is similar in actual size to M96, then it would be about 5 times farther away.

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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.

Publikacii s klyuchevymi slovami: spiral galaxy - spiral'naya galaktika - M 96 Publikacii so slovami: spiral galaxy - spiral'naya galaktika - M 96
Sm. takzhe: M51: prilivnye potoki i oblako ionizovannogo vodoroda NGC 300: galaktika iz zvezd Spiral'naya galaktika s peremychkoi NGC 1365 ot teleskopa "Dzheims Vebb" Spiral'naya galaktika NGC 6744 M106: spiral'naya galaktika so strannym yadrom NGC 247 s druz'yami Licom k NGC 6946 Vse publikacii na tu zhe temu >>