05.16.13 Featured Image Icon-rss

Galactic Wheels within Wheels

This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the double-ringed galaxy Messier 94. Just outside the bright core, a burning ring of star formation glows brightly in the light of warm interstellar dust. Encircling it all is the faint blue glow of starlight forming what was long taken to be an outer ring of stars, but may not be a ring at all.