Hubble Images Milky Way’s Big Sister

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt

This image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) shows a beautiful spiral galaxy called NGC 6744. At first glance, it resembles our Milky Way albeit larger, measuring more than 200,000 light-years across compared to a 100,000-light-year diameter for our home galaxy.

Continued...
Source / Image Courtesy

One difference between NGC 6744 and the Milky Way is their size. While our galaxy is roughly 100 000 light-years across, the galaxy pictured here extends to almost twice this diameter.

Nevertheless, NGC 6744 gives us a tantalizing sense of how a distant observer might see our own galactic home.