Above and Beyond: Edge-On Galaxy NGC 5866

 

 

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

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A galaxy viewed edge on. A gray line of dust and stars.

 

Text, GALAXY N.G.C. 5866. This edge-on galaxy stretches across 60,000 light-years of space.

 

Murky dust lanes cut through the galaxy's huge halo.

 

Brown tendrils of dust reach out of the disk as if trying to touch the stars in the halo.

 

A reddish-yellow core bulges ever so slightly from the center of the disk.

 

The view tilts. A stream of blue extends from the left end of the galaxy.

 

Text, Bright blue stars extend the galaxy's disk even farther than the dust can reach.