• Question: whats your favourate galaxy?

    Asked by to Sam on 13 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sam Connolly

      Sam Connolly answered on 13 Jun 2014:

      Tough question… depends on why I’m choosing! The Whirlpool galaxy (Also called M51a) is probably the most beautiful in my opinion, but there are loads of others that are cool for different reasons. I like the Sombrero galaxy (M104), which has an amazing ring of dust around it, which is why it looks a bit like a Sombrero. One of the galaxies I’m looking at the moment, called NGC660 (they ran out of good names eventually because there are so many galaxies), is cool because it’s made of two galaxies that have crashed together, so there are two discs of stars, on thats through the middle of the other!

      My favourite is probably NGC1365 though, though I’m biased because it’s the one I’ve studied the most… it’s a really cool ‘barred’ spiral galaxy, which means it has a straight line of stars in the middle with spirals coming off the ends. It also has a really interesting black hole in the centre, which is constantly changing!

      You can look them all up on google, or on the hubble gallery at http://hubblesite.org/gallery/ let me know which you think looks coolest 🙂

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