August 23, 2010 - Distant Spiral Splendor

Published in cooperation with The Planetary Society

Spend the year in space, one week at a time

Recent Weeks

January 30, 2012 - Lunar Orbiter Liftoff

January 23, 2012 - Magellan Turns up the Stereo

January 16, 2012 - Southern Sibling Sees Stars

January 9, 2012 - Hitching a Ride Home

January 2, 2012 - Transforming the Space Frontier

December 26, 2011 - These Laws Can't Be Broken

December 19, 2011 - Long and Winding Road

December 12, 2011 - Blast from the Past

December 5, 2011 - It’s Just Like Folding a Map

November 28, 2011 - A Warmer, Wetter Mars

November 21, 2011 - Spy in the Sky

November 14, 2011 - The Dark Side of Nebulosity

November 7, 2011 - End of an Era

October 31, 2011 - Final Service Call

October 24, 2011 - STEREO Transit

October 17, 2011 - Observatory Mashup

October 10, 2011 - Brewing up a New Moon

October 3, 2011 - Special Delivery

September 26, 2011 - Tadpoles in Space

September 19, 2011 - International Sunrise

September 12, 2011 - Twins over India

September 5, 2011 - Belly of the Beast

August 29, 2011 - High Resolution

August 22, 2011 - Playing Host

August 15, 2011 - Royal Astronomer

August 8, 2011 - New Life for Leonardo

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Weekly photo essay
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The Week in Space

August 23-29, 2010

Distant Spiral Splendor A glance at the night sky rewards you with a view of enormous suns so incredibly distant they appear as mere points of light. If you know where to look, you can spy a few galaxies with your naked eye, some far enough away that their light took two million years to reach your eyes. With the proper equipment you can view even more distant objects, like NGC 891, an edge-on spiral galaxy in Andromeda some 30 million light-years away. This dramatic image of NGC 891 was taken by California amateur astronomer Jay GaBany using a 20-inch remotely-operated telescope located in New Mexico. He used an 11-megapixel astronomical CCD imager to collect over twenty hours of starlight on multiple evenings between November 2006 and April 2007.

Image credit:R. Jay GaBany / www.cosmotography.com