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 66 objects
- 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…
- 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…
- Cassiopeia A — The youngest known supernova remnant in the galaxy — a star’s insides flung outward at thousands of km/s.
- 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 ghost of a star that died twenty millennia ago — a vast shock bubble still expanding through the gas of…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- Andromeda Galaxy — The nearest major galaxy and the most distant thing visible to the naked eye. It is falling toward the Milky…
- 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.
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- Pegasus Dwarf (DDO 216) — A dwarf caught mid-transformation — once an irregular, now nearly out of gas and fading toward a quiet…
- 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…
- Small Magellanic Cloud — A smaller, more distant companion to the LMC, trailing a bridge of hydrogen gas torn loose by the Milky…
- Tucana Dwarf — A remote, ancient spheroidal stranded at the southern edge of the Local Group — far from any large galaxy…
- Ursa Minor Dwarf — An elongated wisp of a galaxy made almost entirely of stars over 10 billion years old — it has formed…
- 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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