Sunday, May 3, 2009

The Whale Galaxy

As a self-proclaimed geek, I subscribe to a variety of blogs and websites. I'm not just into whales; I also geek out over knitting, psychology, webcomics, and NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD).

Today's featured picture is of the Whale Galaxy, also known as the Herring Galaxy or NGC 4631. (NGC stands for New General Catalogue, which is a catalogue of deep space objects.) The Whale Galaxy, which is a mere 25 million light-years from Earth, has been featured a couple of times on APOD, and each image is fascinatingly beautiful.

Most whales are quite large. This whale is as large as the Milky Way. Take that, Big Blue!

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