                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2022 April 14

                                 Messier 96
            Image Credit & Copyright: Mark Hanson and Mike Selby

   Explanation: Spiral arms seem to swirl around the core of Messier 96 in
   this colorful, detailed portrait of a beautiful island universe. Of
   course M96 is a spiral galaxy, and counting the faint arms extending
   beyond the brighter central region it spans 100 thousand light-years or
   so. That's about the size of our own Milky Way. M96 is known to be 38
   million light-years distant, a dominant member of the Leo I galaxy
   group. Background galaxies and smaller Leo I group members can be found
   by examining the picture. The most intriguing one is itself a spiral
   galaxy seen nearly edge on behind the outer spiral arm near the 1
   o'clock position from center. Its bright central bulge cut by its own
   dark dust clouds, the edge-on background spiral appears to be about 1/5
   the size of M96. If that background galaxy is similar in actual size to
   M96, then it would be about 5 times farther away.

                  Tomorrow's picture: the red planet rocks
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