Striking View of Spiral Galaxy , 'Milky Way twin'

Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory have released a stunning picture of NGC 6744, a spiral galaxy described as a "sibling" of our own Milky Way.
The galaxy is around 30 million light-years away and nearly twice the size and closely resembles our own Milky Way's spiral arm structure ,

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/dc630d3406c6.jpg[/atsimg]

We see NGC 6744 almost face on, meaning we get a dramatic bird’s eye view of the galaxy’s structure. If we had the technology to escape the Milky Way and could look down on it from intergalactic space, this view is close to the one we would see — striking spiral arms wrapping around a dense, elongated nucleus and a dusty disc. There is even a distorted companion galaxy — NGC 6744A, seen here as a smudge to the lower right of NGC 6744, which is reminiscent of one of the Milky Way’s neighbouring Magellanic Clouds.
www.eso.org...

Wow, it's so beautiful

Now if we could stop loosing our time with economy, wars and start working together to actually go out there and explore. Knowledge is the true currency of the soul.

reply to post by gortex


It's beautiful. And massive.

Twice the size of the Milky Way? So it's almost 200,000 light years across, that's incredible.

And to think we're just on one of those arms of a small galaxy, in a tiny solar system, on a tiny planet.