Edge-on
35. view of NGC 5866
This is a unique view of the disk galaxy NGC 5866 tilted nearly edge-on to our line-of-sight.
Hubble’s sharp vision reveals a crisp dust lane dividing the galaxy into two halves. The
image highlights the galaxy’s structure: a subtle, reddish bulge surrounding a bright
nucleus, a blue disk of stars running parallel to the dust lane, and a transparent outer
halo.
Some faint, wispy trails of dust can be seen meandering away from the disk of the galaxy
out into the bulge and inner halo of the galaxy. The outer halo is dotted with numerous
gravitationally bound clusters of nearly a million stars each, known as globular clusters.
Background galaxies that are millions to billions of light-years farther away than NGC
5866 are also seen through the halo.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)
“Our favorite image is one not even in our own field: it’s the picture of
Omega Centauri, the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way.*
“The color composite early release image that was obtained with WFC3
shortly after it was installed in 2009 was amazing: the stars are so densely
packed that in ground-based images, the stars are all blended together.
But in the WFC3 image, you can see black space between the stars, you
can see all the way through the cluster.
“In the color composite, you can easily pick out the relatively rare red
giants and blue horizontal branch stars. It’s simply stunning.”
— Dr. Bradley M. Peterson & Dr. Gisella De Rosa
Professor and Chair of Astronomy
Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
Visiting Astronomer
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
* http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/25/image/d/