The Hubble Space Telescope, ESA page has just recently released a new image of the striking galaxy Messier 66.
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI/AURA, Davide De Martin & Robert Gendler
The spiral galaxy, M66, is found in the constellation of Leo nearby Messier 65 and NGC 3628 (Creating the Leo triplet, a trio of interacting spiral galaxies) Out of the three galaxies, is the largest at a size of nearly 100 000 light-years across!
Messier 66 is somewhat an unusual galaxy, as it has “asymmetrical arms”. Meaning that the arms are not of the same proportion, which is very unusual for a galaxy as, most often, waves of gas and dust from new born stars “blow” around the galaxy’s center in a symmetric way (Where as it does not here). This is believed to be caused by the gradational pull of its nearby galactic neighbors, Messier 65 and NGC3658.
As always, ESA has also a terrific new installment of the HubbleCast, going into depth about the image (To view it click here).
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