Galaxies and deep-sky objects

Beyond the Milky Way, these objects are placed at their real measured distances rather than pinned to a flat sky. Fly outward and they separate into genuine three-dimensional structure — the Local Group scattered around us, then the nearby groups, then the Virgo Cluster.

Several nebulae are NASA 3D reconstructions, so approaching the Crab Nebula or the Cygnus Loop shows real modelled structure rather than a photograph on a billboard.

Galaxies and deep-sky objects — all 94 objects

• 47 Tucanae — A dense ball of ancient stars beside the Small Magellanic Cloud in the southern sky, second only to Omega…
• Andromeda I — One of Andromeda’s closest spheroidal satellites — a faint companion to our great neighbour, mirroring the…
• Andromeda II — A satellite of Andromeda whose stars still spin with the fossil signature of two smaller dwarfs that merged…
• Andromeda III — A markedly elongated dwarf orbiting Andromeda, its stretched shape hinting at tides from its giant host.
• Andromeda VII (Cassiopeia) — The brightest of Andromeda’s spheroidal satellites, sitting well out from its host in the constellation…
• Antennae Galaxies — Two spiral galaxies in the middle of a collision, their discs crashing together while two long tails of…
• Aquarius Dwarf (DDO 210) — A tiny, lonely dwarf drifting on the outskirts of the Local Group, still clinging to a little gas and the…
• Carina Dwarf — A faint southern satellite whose stars formed in several separate episodes — its history reads like a…
• Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) — One of the largest and brightest nebulae in our sky, four times the size of the Orion Nebula, lit by…
• Cassiopeia A — The debris of a star torn apart around 1680, expanding at thousands of kilometres per second.
• Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) — One of the most intricate planetary nebulae known: nested bubbles, knots and jets around a dying star…
• Centaurus A (NGC 5128) — A giant elliptical with a dark dust lane slashed across it — the wreckage of a spiral galaxy it swallowed.
• Cetus Dwarf — A rare free-floating spheroidal: old and gasless like a satellite, yet orbiting neither the Milky Way nor…
• Canes Venatici I — A faint, distant halo satellite teased out of survey data — part of the wave of ultra-faint dwarfs that…
• Cygnus Loop — The expanding blast wave of an exploded star, with the Eastern and Western Veil and other filaments tracing…
• DG Tauri — Disc and Jets — DG Tauri is a young star accreting material from a surrounding disc while launching opposing jets.
• Double Cluster — Two young star clusters side by side in Perseus, about 53 light-years apart across the sky and visible to…
• Draco Dwarf — A few hundred thousand faint stars bound by far more dark matter than light — one of the most…
• Homunculus Nebula — Two billowing lobes of dust blasted out of Eta Carinae during an eruption so violent it briefly became the…
• Fornax Dwarf — The brightest Milky Way dwarf spheroidal — large enough to keep a retinue of six globular clusters, a puzzle…
• Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) — The Helix is the expanding gas around a dying Sun-like star. Its familiar ring has depth when explored from…
• Horsehead and Flame Nebulae — The famous dark horse’s head is a pillar of cold dust in front of glowing hydrogen. To the north, past…
• Hourglass Nebula (MyCn 18) — Two lobes of expelled gas form the Etched Hourglass around a dying star and its companion. This freely…
• Hyades — The nearest star cluster to the Sun: hundreds of stars born together, forming the V-shaped face of Taurus…
• IC 10 — The Local Group’s lone starburst — a small galaxy ablaze with new stars and one of the densest known…
• IC 1613 — A faint, almost dustless irregular whose clean stellar populations make it a favourite rung on the cosmic…
• Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443) — A supernova blast wave is colliding with surrounding gas, producing the irregular Jellyfish Nebula.
• Leo I — A distant Milky Way satellite that swings far out on its orbit — its stars kept forming late, unusually so…
• Leo II — A small, round ball of old stars far out in the Milky Way’s halo, almost spherical and almost entirely…
• Leo A — An isolated, gas-rich dwarf that did most of its star-forming late — over 90% of its stars are younger than…
• Large Magellanic Cloud — The Milky Way’s brightest companion galaxy, visible from the southern hemisphere as a detached wisp of sky.
• Crab Nebula — The shredded remains of a star Chinese astronomers watched explode in 1054 — bright enough then to see in…
• Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) — An enormous, almost perfectly face-on pinwheel, lopsided from an ancient near-collision — its sprawling arms…
• Sombrero Galaxy (M104) — A glowing bulge of old stars brimmed by a knife-thin ring of dark dust — the unmistakable hat-shaped galaxy…
• M106 — A spiral with two extra “anomalous” arms made of hot gas, carved by jets from its active core — whose black…
• M110 (NGC 205) — Andromeda's larger elliptical satellite — unusually, it still holds clouds of dust and a few young stars…
• Hercules Cluster — A third of a million ancient stars packed into a ball — some nearly as old as the universe itself, orbiting…
• Pillars of Creation — The most famous photograph in astronomy, in the round: towers of cold gas where new stars are condensing…
• Trifid Nebula (M20) — Dark lanes of dust split its glowing red heart into three lobes, which gave it its name. The blue glow to…
• Dumbbell Nebula (M27) — The glowing gas cast off by a dying Sun-like star over the last ten thousand years, lit by the hot white…
• Andromeda Galaxy — The nearest major galaxy and the most distant thing visible to the naked eye, home to about a trillion stars.
• M32 — A dense little ball of old stars hugging Andromeda — most likely the surviving nucleus of a galaxy that M31…
• Triangulum Galaxy — The third-largest galaxy in the Local Group and a possible satellite of Andromeda — a loose, flocculent…
• Orion Nebula — The nearest stellar nursery: a glowing cavern of gas where thousands of new stars are igniting right now.
• Beehive Cluster — A swarm of stars in Cancer that looks like a faint glowing cloud to the naked eye. Galileo’s telescope first…
• Pleiades — The Seven Sisters — the sky’s most famous cluster, young hot stars still wrapped in wisps of the reflection…
• M49 — The luminous giant of southern Virgo — a smooth elliptical ball of ancient stars, the first galaxy in which…
• Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) — The first galaxy ever seen to have spiral structure — a perfect whirlpool whose arms are being tugged into…
• Ring Nebula (M57) — Expelled gas surrounds a dying star. The bright ring encircles an elongated interior that protrudes on both…
• M58 — A handsome barred spiral near the centre of the cluster, its straight bar feeding gas into an active core…
• M60 — A giant elliptical on the eastern edge of Virgo, leaning against a blue spiral — its core holds one of the…
• M61 — One of the largest star-forming spirals in Virgo, seen face-on with knotty arms wound around a bright bar…
• Sunflower Galaxy (M63) — Instead of two clean arms, a tangle of short golden filaments swirls around its core like the seeds of a…
• Black Eye Galaxy (M64) — A spiral with a great dark band of dust curled across its bright core — a swallowed companion left its inner…
• Phantom Galaxy (M74) — A faint, flawless two-armed spiral seen face-on — so symmetric it is the poster child for grand-design…
• M77 (Cetus A) — The brightest and closest of the Seyfert galaxies — a barred spiral whose blindingly bright core, lit by gas…
• Lagoon Nebula (M8) — A vast cloud of glowing hydrogen where stars are still forming, threaded with dark dust lanes around the…
• Bode’s Galaxy (M81) — A textbook spiral whose tidy arms were combed into shape by a close pass with its starburst neighbour M82…
• Cigar Galaxy (M82) — The sky’s archetypal starburst galaxy — its core, shocked by M81’s gravity, is birthing stars so furiously…
• Southern Pinwheel (M83) — A blazing face-on barred spiral strung with pink star-forming knots, near enough that its individual giant…
• M84 — One of the bright anchors of Markarian’s Chain — a smooth elliptical whose core hides a billion-Sun black…
• M86 — A great lens of old stars plunging through the cluster gas so fast it is being stripped bare, trailing a…
• M87 (Virgo A) — The monster at the heart of the Virgo Cluster — a giant elliptical swarming with trillions of stars and…
• M90 — A large spiral escaping the Virgo Cluster — its star-forming gas already stripped away by the cluster…
• M94 — A spiral wrapped in a glowing ring of new stars around a bright golden core — and oddly short of the…
• Magellanic Stream — A river of hydrogen gas drawn out of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, trailing behind them across the…
• Fornax A (NGC 1316) — A swollen lenticular galaxy laced with dark dust ripples — the leftovers of galaxies it has eaten — and one…
• NGC 147 — A dwarf elliptical satellite of Andromeda, gravitationally paired with nearby NGC 185 — the two orbit each…
• NGC 185 — A quiet dwarf companion of Andromeda harbouring a Seyfert nucleus — one of the closest active galactic…
• Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) — A dusty, near-edge-on spiral so thick with newborn stars and dark lanes that it is sometimes called the…
• NGC 3109 — A thin, edge-on streak of a galaxy at the very edge of the Local Group, heading the small Antlia–Sextans…
• Whale Galaxy (NGC 4631) — A long, slightly bent edge-on disc that really does look like a whale, with a glowing halo of hot gas above…
• Barnard's Galaxy (NGC 6822) — A ragged bar of stars strung with glowing hydrogen bubbles — a free-floating cousin of the Magellanic…
• NGC 7320 — A modest spiral galaxy that only appears to belong to Stephan’s Quintet. It lies about 40 million…
• Omega Centauri — The biggest and brightest globular cluster in the Milky Way: millions of ancient stars in a ball about 150…
• Pegasus Dwarf (DDO 216) — A dwarf caught mid-transformation — once an irregular, now nearly out of gas and fading toward a quiet…
• Rosette Nebula — A rose of glowing hydrogen around the young star cluster NGC 2244, whose fierce light and winds have…
• Sagittarius Dwarf Irregular — A remote, pristine scrap of a galaxy — its stars are so poor in heavy elements that it offers a glimpse of…
• Sculptor Dwarf — The first of the Milky Way’s ghostly spheroidal satellites to be discovered — a sparse swarm of ancient…
• Sextans A — A boxy little galaxy whose star formation rings its edges, giving it a curiously squared-off shape on the sky.
• Sextans B — A faint irregular near the far boundary of the Local Group, paired in the sky with Sextans A and the NGC…
• Sextans Dwarf — A sprawling, exceptionally diffuse cloud of ancient stars — so spread out it went unnoticed until 1990…
• Sagittarius A* — Sagittarius A* is the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. This interactive view…
• Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy — A small galaxy on a looping orbit over the poles of the Milky Way, hidden behind the crowded centre of our…
• Small Magellanic Cloud — A smaller, more distant companion to the LMC, trailing a bridge of hydrogen gas torn loose by the Milky…
• Supernova 1987A — The shock wave from the 1987 explosion struck a ring of gas shed before the star died. Explore the ring and…
• Southern Ring Nebula (NGC 3132) — Shells of gas puffed off by a dying star over thousands of years, pictured in near-infrared light in one of…
• Stephan’s Quintet — Five galaxies huddled together on the sky, four of them truly interacting about 290 million light-years away.
• Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus) — The brightest, most violent star factory in the Local Group, lit by the giant stars of the R136 cluster at…
• Tucana Dwarf — A remote, ancient spheroidal stranded at the southern edge of the Local Group — far from any large galaxy…
• Tycho’s Supernova Remnant (SN 1572) — The expanding debris of a white dwarf that exploded in 1572, the “new star” whose study by Tycho Brahe…
• Ursa Minor Dwarf — An elongated wisp of a galaxy made almost entirely of stars over 10 billion years old — it has formed…
• Vela Supernova Remnant — The tattered blast wave of a star that exploded about 11,000 years ago, one of the nearest supernova…
• WLM (Wolf–Lundmark–Melotte) — A long, isolated sliver of a galaxy near the edge of the Local Group, named for the three astronomers who…

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