Behold a galaxy twice the size of the Milky Way!

Our whitish Way is just a spiral galaxy , but NGC 1232 here is a grand whorled galax , its diam doubly as long as ours . Everything is boastful in NGC 1232 , including the giant satellite coltsfoot falsify it out of shape .

Technically speak , NGC 1232 is a grand design voluted coltsfoot , so named of its exceedingly well - defined whorled arms . But even then , its munition are unusual , as most spiral galaxy like this would have gently sheer weaponry . NGC 1232 has much more sharply bent arms . That ’s likely because of the gravitative deformation of its artificial satellite galaxy , the rather unimaginatively appoint NGC 1232A. While most large galax have satellite galaxies – there ’s a midget one orbiting our galaxy just 70,000 light - years away – very few satellites are both so close and so monumental .

This particular image was taken by the European Southern Observatory ’s Very Large Telescope back on September 21 , 1998 . The ESO explains how the image was created :

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It is ground on three exposure in ultra - violet , depressed and red light , severally . The colours of the different regions are well visible : the central sphere contain older star topology of reddish gloss , while the spiral sleeve are populated by vernal , blue stars and many wiz - forming neighborhood . Note the malformed familiar coltsfoot on the left side , shaped like the Grecian alphabetic character “ theta ” .

NGC 1232 is located 20º to the south of the celestial equator , in the constellation Eridanus ( The River ) . The distance is about 100 million light - age , but the excellent optical quality of the VLT and FORS allows us to see an unbelievable wealth of details . At the indicated length , the edge of the field demo corresponds to about 200,000 sluttish - years , or about twice the size of the Milky Way extragalactic nebula .

ESOviaNASA .

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