This glittering Hubble Space Telescope image shows the spiral galaxy IC 5332, which lies about 30 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor, and has an almost face-on orientation to Earth.
To explain what is meant by ‘face-on’, it is helpful to visualise a spiral galaxy as an (extremely) large disc. If the galaxy is oriented so that it appears circular and disc-shaped from our perspective here on Earth, then we can say that it is ‘face-on’. In contrast, if it is oriented so that it appears squashed and oval-shaped, then we would say that it is ‘edge-on’. The key thing is that the same galaxy would look extremely different from our perspective depending on whether it was face-on or edge-on as seen from Earth.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST team
For more information, visit:
science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-captures-a-galaxy...
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