The most beautiful galaxies are a reality. The universe offers unknown things, also beautiful like galaxies. Many of them do not even escape our gaze. Although we all love our beautiful Milky Way, “the view is natural” and that is why there are others that earn the nickname “the most beautiful.”
As they would say out there, andhe Universe is all of our space and our time, which It houses enormous and beautiful wonders that we do not know, but at least we can observe its great beauty.
It is estimated that There are around two hundred billion observable galaxies.s in the universe of very varied and diverse shapes such as spiral, elliptical, irregular, round… a whole universe in itself, of which we still know very little. However, we can observe some of the shapes of the most beautiful galaxies so far known. If you chose one, which would be your favorite?
The most beautiful galaxies that the cosmos has discovered
Milky Way
The Milky Way tops the list of the “most beautiful galaxies.” For example, it is a spiral type (spiral arms are its most characteristic quality) and has an age of 13.2 billion years and a diameter of 100,000 light years. The disk of our galaxy is far from perfectly flat; In fact, as can be seen in many images, it is deformed, a characteristic that astronomers attribute to the two neighbors of our galaxy, the large and small clouds of . In addition, the Milky Way has a halo.
Scientists believe that 90% of the mass of our galaxy consists of dark matter. In this case, the halo is actually invisible, but its existence has been demonstrated by running simulations of how the Milky Way would appear without this invisible mass, for example.
Hockey stick
The protagonist of this image from the NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope is a galaxy known as NGC 4656 or hockey stick galaxy. It is located in the constellation of Canes Venatici. Although its name is confusing due to this partial view, the truth is that the galaxy has the shape of an elongated and deformed stick, which extends through space until it curls up at one end to form a surprising imitation of a celestial hockey stick.
This unusual shape is due to an interaction between NGC 4656 and a pair of close neighbors, NGC 4631 and NGC 4627. These galactic interactions can completely transform a celestial object, displacing and deforming its gas, stars and dust into shapes as strange and beautiful as this one.
Large Magellanic Cloud
The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy, also a member of the Local Group. It is located 160,000 light years away from Earth.; It is ‘so close’ that it is visible to the naked eye as a faint object in the Earth’s southern hemisphere located between the constellations of Dorado and Mensa. The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was the first to discover the existence of this galaxy, hence its name.
Pinwheel
The pinwheel galaxy It is a spiral-shaped galaxy located approximately 21 million light years from Earth. Scientists call this swirling galaxy M101.
You can find it in the constellation of Ursa Major or Carro Major, in the northern hemisphere. On a nice night, with a dark sky, you can see it with binoculars or a small telescope.
Cigar Galaxy or Messier 82
There are approximately 51 galaxies in the Local Group, since The Cigar Galaxy is one of the most prominent along with Andromeda or the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is an elongated and narrow irregular galaxy located in the constellation of Ursa Major, about 12 million light years away from Earth. It has a high volume of star formation in the center, with a formation rate of 10 solar masses per year, and a size of 500 parsecs. A supernova occurs every 10 years.