Insight Into: Galaxy Variety

 

 

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach.

 

All images, illustrations, and videos courtesy of NASA, ESA, and STScI except:

 

·       NGC 6822 image courtesy of the Local Group Galaxies Survey Team/NOAO/AURA/NSF

·       Taurus constellation drawing from Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia by Johannes Hevelius, courtesy of the United States Naval Observatory

·       NGC 4565 image courtesy of the European Southern Observatory

·       Small Magellanic Cloud image courtesy of F. Winkler/Middlebury College, the MCELS Team, and NOAO/AURA/NSF

 

Written by Vanessa Thomas

Designed by John Godfrey 

Music courtesy of Association Production Music

(SPEECH) 

 [DOWNBEAT MUSIC] 

(DESCRIPTION) 
 A multitude of galaxies in space. 

Text, The universe is filled with snowflakes. 

Not the frozen-water-falling-from-the-sky kind, but the kind made of stars, gas, and dust -- galaxies. 

Like snowflakes on Earth, no two galaxies in space are exactly alike. 

A sliding square puzzle with a galaxy on each square. 

Text, We can classify galaxies into type -- spirals, ellipticals, irregulars -- based on their characteristics. SPIRAL GALAXIES. ELLIPTICAL GALAXIES. IRREGULAR GALAXIES. But galaxies of the same type have special features that make each one unique.