                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2025 June 13

                               Rubin's Galaxy
       Image Credit: NASA, ESA, B. Holwerda (University of Louisville)

   Explanation: In this Hubble Space Telescope image the bright, spiky
   stars lie in the foreground toward the heroic northern constellation
   Perseus and well within our own Milky Way galaxy. In sharp focus beyond
   is UGC 2885, a giant spiral galaxy about 232 million light-years
   distant. Some 800,000 light-years across compared to the Milky Way's
   diameter of 100,000 light-years or so, it has around 1 trillion stars.
   That's about 10 times as many stars as the Milky Way. Part of an
   investigation to understand how galaxies can grow to such enormous
   sizes, UGC 2885 was also part of An Interesting Voyage and American
   astronomer Vera Rubin's pioneering study of the rotation of spiral
   galaxies. Her work was the first to convincingly demonstrate the
   dominating presence of dark matter in our universe. A new U.S. coin has
   been issured to honor Vera Rubin, while the Vera C. Rubin Observatory
   is scheduled to unveil images from its first look at the cosmos on June
   23.

                     Tomorrow's picture: criss-crossing
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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                           NASA Science Activation
                             & Michigan Tech. U.

