Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Yeah... what is the gorgeous face-on spiral at lower left-center?

Hard to say...

The STSI press release says the "open cluster NGC 602" (actually, a cluster plus nebulosity, as the image clearly indicates) is what is pictured, and none of my references show any galaxies within a degree of it. Even Uranometria, 2ed, which plots all galaxies down to mag 15 doesn't show it. It is probably anonymous, that is, uncatalogued. Keep in mind, that this object is in the small Cloud, so NGC 602 itself is a pretty obscure object, it doesn't even have a magnitude or size listed for it in the NGC. Only the Hubble can show this much detail for an extragalactic open cluster; indeed, it looks better than most OCs in our own galaxy do from ground-based scopes.

But it is magnificent, isn't it?

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