NGC 1300

NGC 1300 is a barred spiral galaxy about 61 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. The galaxy is about 110,000 light-years across; about 2/3 the size of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. It is a member of the Eridanus Cluster, a cluster of 200 galaxies. It was discovered by John Herschel in 1835.

Image

The image on the right was taken with Hubble Space Telescope during September 2004. It is a composite using four filters: Blue (with a center wavelength of 435 nm), Visual (555 nm), Infrared (814 nm) and Hydrogen-alpha (658 nm). The image's resolution, a myriad of fine details, some of which have never before been seen, is seen throughout the galaxy's arms, disk, bulge, and nucleus. Blue and red supergiant stars, star clusters, and star-forming regions are well resolved across the spiral arms, and dust lanes trace out fine structures in the disk and bar. Numerous more distant galaxies are visible in the background, and are seen even through the densest regions of NGC 1300.