by APOD Robot » Thu Oct 08, 2015 4:11 am
M83: The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy
Explanation: Big, bright, and beautiful,
spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation
Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, The Southern Pinwheel. But reddish
star forming regions that dot the sweeping arms highlighted in this sparkling color composite also suggest another nickname, The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy
Centaurus A. In fact, the core of M83 itself is bright
at x-ray energies, showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. This sharp composite color image also features
spiky foreground Milky Way stars and distant background galaxies. The image data was taken from the Subaru Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's Wide Field
Imager camera, and the Hubble Legacy Archive.
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[url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap151008.html][img]http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_151008.jpg[/img] [size=150]M83: The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy[/size][/url]
[b] Explanation: [/b] Big, bright, and beautiful, [url=http://messier.seds.org/m/m083.html]spiral galaxy M83[/url] lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation [url=http://www.hawastsoc.org/deepsky/hya/index.html]Hydra[/url]. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, The Southern Pinwheel. But reddish [url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061123.html]star forming regions[/url] that dot the sweeping arms highlighted in this sparkling color composite also suggest another nickname, The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy [url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080110.html]Centaurus A[/url]. In fact, the core of M83 itself is bright [url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030206.html]at x-ray energies[/url], showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. This sharp composite color image also features [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction_spike]spiky[/url] foreground Milky Way stars and distant background galaxies. The image data was taken from the Subaru Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's Wide Field [url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070822.html]Imager camera[/url], and the Hubble Legacy Archive.
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