6 April 2011 - The Perfect Spiral
M74 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Pisces that offers an almost perfect head-on view. It contains about 100 billion stars and is 32 million light years away. Considering that the picture is half the width of the full moon, it actually covers quite a large surface area of the sky. It's compelling to think that this majestic structure is right in front of our eyes, but we can't see it because of the long exposure times required to reveal most of the stars. M74 has multiple blue clusters and cosmic dust lanes. Some exposure in the infrared revealed a part of the hydrogen emission spectra.
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