Magnitude +11.2 face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6814 lies in the constellation Aquila, 74.4 million light-years from Earth. Click the image for a full-size view. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt.Spiral galaxies together with irregular galaxies make up approximately 60 percent of the galaxies in the local Universe. However, despite their prevalence, each spiral galaxy is unique — like snowflakes, no two are alike. This is demonstrated by the striking face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6814, whose luminous nucleus and spectacular sweeping arms, rippled with an intricate pattern of dark dust, are captured in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image.
NGC 6814 has an extremely bright nucleus, a telltale sign that the galaxy is a Seyfert galaxy. These galaxies have very active centres that can emit strong bursts of radiation. The luminous heart of NGC 6814 is a highly variable source of X-ray radiation, causing scientists to suspect that it hosts a supermassive black hole with a mass about 18 million times that of the Sun.
As NGC 6814 is a very active galaxy, many regions of ionised gas are studded along its spiral arms. In these large clouds of gas, a burst of star formation has recently taken place, forging the brilliant blue stars that are visible scattered throughout the galaxy.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the galaxy Messier 94, which lies in the small northern constellation of Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs), about 16 million light-years away. Within the bright ring or starburst ring around Messier 94, new stars are forming at a high rate and many young, bright stars are present within it.
Taking a second look with a more powerful camera, Hubble reveals thousands of emission nebulae in an oddball irregular dwarf galaxy 17 million light years from Earth
A remote galaxy shining with the light of more than 300 trillion suns has been discovered using data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). It is the most luminous galaxy found to date and belongs to a new class of objects — extremely luminous infrared galaxies, or ELIRGs.
