Astronomy Picture of the Day - M100: A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy

NASA ^ | 2 May, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Drew Evans

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: Majestic on a truly cosmic scale, M100 is appropriately known as a grand design spiral galaxy. The large galaxy of over 100 billion stars has well-defined spiral arms, similar to our own Milky Way. One of the brightest members of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, M100, also known as NGC 4321 is 56 million light-years distant toward the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. In this telescopic image, the face-on grand design spiral shares a nearly 1 degree wide field-of-view with slightly less conspicuous edge-on spiral NGC 4312 (at upper right). The 21 hour long equivalent exposure from a dark sky site near Flagstaff, Arizona, planet Earth, reveals M100's bright blue star clusters and intricate winding dust lanes which are hallmarks of this class of galaxies. Measurements of variable stars in M100 have played an important role in determining the size and age of the Universe.

[MtnClimber]

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For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.

[MtnClimber]

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

[adorno]

Link would be appreciated.

[adorno]

It’s just a hurricane in space. ;)

[Magnum44]

[Jamestown1630]

‘Grand Design’ is an interesting name...

[MtnClimber]

The link is in the “NASA” source below the title. Just click on that.

[adorno]

Did so. I just didn’t see it the first time, and apparently, I was the first to comment.

[No name given]

Wow.

[spankalib]

Beautiful.

...the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices.????

Ahh! In Latin “Coma Berenices” means “Berenice’s hair”.

[rfp1234]

Fibonacci rules.

[telescope115]

It’s beautiful.

[Freee-dame]

Something this enormous and beautiful does not seem possible to be random. To me, it is more indication that there is a God the creator.

[DesertRhino]

Beautiful...

[Jamestown1630]

It seems to me that the person who named it might have sensed that, too - ‘Grand Design’ logically presumes a Designer.

[Freee-dame]

✔️

[Seruzawa]

Naw it’s all by accident. There was nothing. Not even infinite vacuum. And then magically the laws of physics appeared out of nowhere and the universe appeared. Just magic. Today we call this belief in magic “science” as revealed by the great God Einstein. All hail his holy name.

Teehee

[Jamestown1630]

Einstein stated this (from Wiki):

"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist ... I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings". Einstein believed the problem of God was the "most difficult in the world"—a question that could not be answered "simply with yes or no". He conceded that "the problem involved is too vast for our limited minds".

I don't have a problem with that. We all approach God, and believe, in our individual ways.