images

Galaxy NGC 300 in Sculptor

by

Hubble heritage team/Novapix

Reference

a-gax03-00002

Date

2006-09-07

NGC 300 is a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way galaxy. It is a member of a nearby group of galaxies known as the Sculptor group, named for the southern constellation where the group can be found. The distance to NGC 300 is 6.5 million light-years, making it one of the Milky Way's closer neighbors. At this distance, only the brightest stars can be picked out from ground-based images. With a resolution some 10 times better than ground-based telescopes, Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys(ACS) resolves many more stars in this galaxy than can be detected from the ground.