🌌 Galaxy
Pinwheel Galaxy
A huge spiral seen face-on, nearly twice as wide as the Milky Way.
- Distance
- 25 million light-years away
- Size
- 170,000 light-years across
- Stars
- at least 1 trillion
- Discovered
- 1781, by Pierre Méchain
Did you know?
- It is in Ursa Major, near the Big Dipper, and can be seen with a small telescope.
Compare Pinwheel Galaxy with the Milky WaySide by side, to scale, in the app
More NASA photos of Pinwheel GalaxyStraight from NASA’s image library, in the app
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All of deep space
The Sun
Our star, an ordinary one that keeps everything here alive.
Betelgeuse
A red supergiant in Orion that will one day explode.
Alpha Centauri
The closest star system to the Sun.
Eta Carinae
A pair of giant stars, one of them about 90 times heavier than the Sun.
Mira
A red giant star racing through space with a tail like a comet.
Zeta Ophiuchi
A runaway star, flung out when its partner exploded.