The Top 10 Most Astonishingly Beautiful Galaxies

Galaxies are remarkably beautiful. They come in so many shapes and sizes, ranging from elliptical to spirals, from galaxies with only a few thousand stars to ones with 100 trillion. In this article we’re going to be reading at the top ten most visually stunning galaxies .

This should give you a little glimpse of the vastness of these galaxies, and just how many there are out there. If your internet can handle it, now would be the time to view at 4K resolution. This is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, taken in 2004.

All the beautiful lights and shapes are individual galaxies. 8 years later, the Hubble team released the same image, but with 8 years more exposure time. Galaxies that weren’t seen before are suddenly revealed, and scientists predict there are 5,500 galaxies in this one picture alone, each with billions upon billions of stars. And this is just one tiny indiscriminate section of the sky.

NASA has also started looking at huge galaxy clusters. Not only are they hugely impressive to look at, but because of their immense gravity, light warps around them, creating a magnifying effect.

Because of this, we can see one of the oldest galaxies ever discovered, right here in the corner. It’s estimated that this galaxy was formed only 600 million years after the big bang, and is probably about 30 BILLION light years away.

But I’m digressing. You came here for the most beautiful galaxies, and that is what you will get.

M104, the Sombrero Galaxy.

Located only 28 million light years away, this Sombrero shaped galaxy is one of the brightest you’ll find in the sky.
With an 8 inch telescope, you will even make out the dark dust ring which circles the outer edge. This ring is the primary location where a lot of the new stars are formed.
Also at the very centre of this galaxy is thought to be one of the biggest supermassive black holes found in any of our nearby galaxies.
It kind of looks like a giant elliptical galaxy due to its huge bulge in the centre, but is classified as an unbarred spiral galaxy.
This last image combines infrared with visible light.
The galaxy itself is thought to be 50,000 light years across.

NGC 3314.

While this may look like two galaxies that have collided, or even one weirdly shaped galaxy, these are in fact two completely separate galaxies.
One galaxy is a lot further in front than the other, but from our viewpoint, they look like they intersect.
The galaxies are between 117 and 140 million light-years away, and the background galaxy estimated to be 70,000 light years across.

M64, the Black Eye Galaxy.

This spectacular galaxy has a dark band of light absorbing dust in front of the galaxy's bright centre, giving rise to its nicknames of the "Black Eye" or "Evil Eye" galaxy.
Being roughly 24 million light years away, it is close enough to see with an amateur telescope.
It’s a spiral galaxy but interestingly with two counter-rotating disks.
The inner disk rotates one direction, while the outer disk rotates the opposite way.
The outer disk stretches out 51,000 light years across.

M106.

This is one of the closest and brightest spiral galaxies to our own, being roughly 22 million light years away.
While spiral galaxies are relatively common, these pictures reveal some interesting secrets about this galaxy.
The supermassive black hole found in the centre is very active, eating a look more matter than normal.

It also has four spiral arms, but interestingly, as you can see here, two of the arms are made up of gas and not stars. These gaseous arms are hot are shine bright.
The extra arms are thought to be the result of the black hole spewing out the matter it ate.
The galaxy itself is estimated to be 80,000 light years across.

NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, the Antennae Galaxies.

A cataclysmic event occurring before our very eyes, these are two galaxies that have collided in a spectacular way.
They are called the Antennae galaxies because if we zoom out a little, we can see that this collision has left two streamers of stars in their battle.
Because of the interaction between these two galaxies, they are said to be in a state of starburst. These means all the gas within the galaxies are currently forming stars.

Obviously this can’t continue on for a lengthy period of time, and neither can this cosmic battle. Eventually the two galaxies will merge to form one giant, elliptical galaxy.
The Antennae Galaxies are 45 million light years away and from end to end of each tail is a massive 500,000 light years!

M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy.

One of the best known galaxies in the sky, it can be seen with binoculars due to the fact it’s only about 23 million years away.
This bulge to the side is in fact an interacting galaxy, which appears to be just behind its bigger companion.
Found at the nucleus of M51, you can see what is thought to be a dust cloud in the shape of a man, silhouetted by the nucleus of the galaxy.
The colours in the image are the most striking.
The pink and red is the star forming regions, the blue is bright star clusters, and the darkest parts are where huge dust cloud don’t allow light to pass through.
This galaxy is roughly 60,000 light years across.

UGC 10214, the Tadpole Galaxy.

A very peculiar looking galaxy, with a tail which stretches a massive 280,000 light years across, the Tadpole galaxy is the result of a hit and run collision.
Zooming in on the main section of the galaxy, you can see the very blue culprit hiding behind the victim
As the galaxy gets older, the tail will shrink in size, and may even become its own very small, satellite galaxy.
Interestingly, and partially by coincidence, this image is thought to have more galaxies in it than the Ultra Deep Field we showed at the beginning of the article over 6,000 galaxies in the background, yet it only took 1/12th of the exposure time to create the image.
But like the Ultra Deep Field image, these galaxies are some of the oldest that we know of.
The Tadpole galaxy is found 420 million light years away, so you won’t get much luck seeing that through your binoculars!

Arp 273, the Rose Galaxies.

These galaxies, with their stunning colours and beautiful shape, are like finding nature’s hidden Easter egg.
This pair is found 300 million light years away and is believed to be the result of the smaller UGC 1813 passing through the bigger UGC 1810.
The stretching and pulling caused by gravitational effects mean both galaxies are very irregularly shaped, but they will eventually return to normal.
Interactions like this and in the previous collisions we’ve already looked at always lead to great outbursts of star formations.
And you may not have noticed, but interestingly there is also what appears to be a mini spiral caught up in the arm of UGC 1810. Perhaps a galaxy within a galaxy?

M31, Andromeda Galaxy

This is a view in the sky, as it can be seen with the naked eye if you are away from light pollution.
When you think, ‘wow, that is a galaxy, it’s 2.5 light years away, and it’s got one trillion stars’, it’s pretty mind blowing.
As far as galaxies go, it is big - 220,000 light years across - and it’s estimated to have twice as many stars as our own galaxy.
And talking of stars, look at this. It’s the biggest mosaic Hubble has ever created.
And what is just breath-taking is the vastness of this galaxy, and how its individual stars can be resolved.
As we approach the galactic core, we can see how the density of stars increases, until all you can see… is light.
We also have near infrared images of the galaxy too, showing off the dust structure of the galaxy.

Milky Way galaxy.

Our home galaxy. This view might encourage anyone to become an amateur astronomy photographer! Astronomers believe our Galaxy is about 120,000 light years across with about 200-400 billion stars.
Sadly, we don’t know what our Galaxy looks like from the outside due to our perspective of actually being in the galaxy.
But we are sure that we are a spiral galaxy and that we might look something like this.

Now in this panoramic we can see a 360 degree view of the Milky Way from our perspective on Earth.
We can see huge red Nebulae and dust clouds.
We can focus in on the galactic centre, a giant mass of stars.
We can also see some of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way.
Here are two of the biggest ones, the Large and Small Magellanic clouds.
The Milky Way actually has quite a number of orbiting dwarf galaxies, possibly up to 20.
It has become more and more accepted that this is quite common of larger galaxies to have these satellites.

If we zoom out from the Milky Way and look at our local group, you’ll see Andromeda also has a lot of satellite galaxies.
And while we’re here, let’s just keep zooming out to appreciate the scale of our universe.
Here is the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies, zoom out again and we see the Local Superclusters.

Zoom out once more and we have the observable universe. Now think about this. Each one of these dots is a Supercluster of galaxies, each with their own local groups, with their own galaxies, billions upon billions of stars, and each star most likely having planets orbiting them.
To me, that is one of the biggest beauties of space. It’s incomprehensible.

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The Top 10 Most Astonishingly Beautiful Galaxies