This photo of the nearby Sculptor galaxy spans 65,000 light years
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $1.44 a week*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $5.77 plus GST every four weeks. After 52 weeks, price increases to the regular rate of $19.95 plus GST every four weeks. Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/06/2025 (485 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronomers have revealed a nearby spiral galaxy in all its brilliant glory, shining in thousands of colors.
The dazzling panoramic shot released Wednesday of the Sculptor galaxy by a telescope in Chile is so detailed that it’s already serving as a star-packed map.
Scientists used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to observe the galaxy for some 50 hours, stitching together more than 100 exposures to create the picture. The image spans 65,000 light-years, almost the entire galaxy. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
Sculptor — officially labeled NGC 253 — is considered a starburst galaxy, one heavy with stellar action. It’s located 11 million light-years away in the Southern Hemisphere’s constellation Sculptor, and easy to view with binoculars or small telescopes.
“The Sculptor galaxy is in a sweet spot,” the observatory’s Enrico Congiu, who led the research, said in a statement. “It is close enough that we can resolve its internal structure and study its building blocks with incredible detail, but at the same time, big enough that we can still see it as a whole system.”
The more shades of color from stars, gas and dust in a galaxy, the more clues to their age, composition and motion, according to the scientists. Sculptor’s latest snapshot contains thousands of colors — a glowing montage of purples, pinks and yellows — compared with just a handful for traditional pictures.
The team has already discovered 500 planetary nebulae, clouds of gas and dust from dying stars that can serve as cosmic mile markers. Their research has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
