Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744
Image Credit & Copyright: Zhuokai Liu, Jiang Yuhang
Beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo and appears as only a faint, extended object in small telescopes. We see the disk of the nearby island universe tilted towards our line of sight in this remarkably detailed galaxy portrait, a telescopic view that spans an area about the angular size of a full moon. In it, the giant galaxy’s elongated yellowish core is dominated by the light from old, cool stars. Beyond the core, grand spiral arms are filled with young blue star clusters and speckled with pinkish star forming regions. An extended arm sweeps past a smaller satellite galaxy (NGC 6744A) at the lower right. NGC 6744’s galactic companion is reminiscent of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud.
A light-year is a unit of distance. It is the distance that light can travel in one year. Light moves at a velocity of about 300,000 kilometers (km) each second. So in one year, it can travel about 10 trillion km. More precisely, one light-year is equal to 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers. Multiply that by 30 million and that is how far away this galaxy is: 285,000,000,000,000,000,000 km.
With so many of these galaxies out there, tell me which one your sky fairy comes from.
Fake – nasska said the universe is only 6000 years old.
Doncha know that Bishop Ussher said the world began on the evening before October 23rd 4004 BC. Sky Pixie made the light from that galaxy in transit to fool you infidels.
Finally someone with a sense of humour 😅