Astronomers have released this picture of the spiral galaxy NGC 6744, which lies some 174 million trillion miles away from our own Milky Way galaxy, in the southern hemisphere Pavo (The Peacock) constellation, 30 million light years away.
The image, taken by the European Southern Observatory’s MPG/ESO 2.2 metre telescope in Chile, gives us a good idea of what our own galaxy must look like from afar.
The spiral galaxy is almost twice as large as the Mily Way but shows the same sharply defined spiral arms and stretched central region. It even has a small companion galaxy, seen as a smudge to the lower right of the main galaxy, which is reminiscent of one of the Milky Way’s neighbouring Magellanic Clouds.
I wonder what else the two galaxies have in common?
The image, taken by the European Southern Observatory’s MPG/ESO 2.2 metre telescope in Chile, gives us a good idea of what our own galaxy must look like from afar.
The spiral galaxy is almost twice as large as the Mily Way but shows the same sharply defined spiral arms and stretched central region. It even has a small companion galaxy, seen as a smudge to the lower right of the main galaxy, which is reminiscent of one of the Milky Way’s neighbouring Magellanic Clouds.
I wonder what else the two galaxies have in common?
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