geekosystem

This new image of galaxy Messier 106 (M106), a spiral galaxy about 20 million light years from our own, is a mosaic assembling images from the Hubble space Telescope's image archives and the libraries of amateur stargazers to produce a startlingly beautiful image that reveals some brand new information about the galaxy -- for example, that this spiral galaxy has four arms, rather than the customary two.

NASA and the European Southern Observatory have put their heads -- and their space telescope data -- together to produce this image of NGC 6872, the largest known spiral galaxy in the universe. The gargantuan galaxy measures more than half-a-million light years from end to end -- more than five times larger than our own Milky Way.